


J'attendrai

by gypsyweaver



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1940s, Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Beelzebub Has a Penis (Good Omens), Beelzebub Has a Vulva (Good Omens), Beelzebub Whump (Good Omens), Beelzebub has PTSD, Blood and Violence, Captivity, Creepy Sandalphon (Good Omens), Forced Orgasm, God Hates Beelzebub, God is Present, God is evil, Graphic Description, Head Injury, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Leashes, Misgendering, Multi, Nazi occupied France, Nazis, Nightmare Fuel, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-Consensual Kissing, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Nonbinary Beelzebub (Good Omens), Nonbinary Character, POV Beelzebub (Good Omens), POV Gabriel (Good Omens), Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape, Sandalphon Being an Asshole (Good Omens), Sandalphon Has a Penis (Good Omens), The Author Regrets Everything, They/Them Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Vomiting, Whump, the author is sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:08:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25049671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gypsyweaver/pseuds/gypsyweaver
Summary: 16 June, 1940. Paris, France. Beelzebub is topside for field work, working with the French resistance. The job is wrapping up. They're to be captured, and probably publicly martyred.There are worse things. Unfortunately, one of those worse things just walked in.Mind the tags and the content warnings at the beginning of each chapter. This is pain and blood and misery. The comfort comes late.
Relationships: Beelzebub & Gabriel (Good Omens), Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens), Beelzebub/Sandalphon (Good Omens)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 33





	1. La Pierre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [irishamrock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishamrock/gifts).



> CW: Michael is a useless butthole (but mostly blameless, TBH), Nuriel is vile, Sandalphon is a monster, rape, vaginal rape, digital rape, forced orgasm, forced oral, vomiting, violence, head injury, captivity, non-consensual bondage, misgendering, whump, so much whump
> 
> Mind the tags and the CW's at the opening of each chapter. If I missed ANYTHING, hit me up.
> 
> This is grim, y'all.

Paris, 16 June, 1940 -- Sunset

* * *

The sun was setting over _L’École des Beaux-Arts_. Beelzebub could see it from their small attic garret. The orange light bathed the building, fingering the bricks, the columns, and the ornaments. They remembered watching the building go up, some time before. _La Belle Époche_ was not so long ago, for a demon.

And now, at what felt like the end of the world, they watched the sun dip behind it.

The faded floral wallpaper of their rented room glowed. The sunset light picked out the petals of the red poppies and the wild roses. The furnishings were spare. A small bed, a desk, a chair. An empty bookcase. An open and equally empty wardrobe.

Félix and Anna left less than an hour ago. They’d taken the last of the fliers, the books, and Beelzebub’s manifesto and guns.

“They’re coming for me. So I won’t need this,” Beelzebub had told the two students, handing over a sack of food (black bread, butter, and two oranges that--in spite of being a bit puckered--were miraculously perfect inside) to go with everything else. “Give my regards to _Les Français Libres_.”

“It’s not too late,” Anna said, her voice quavering. “ _La Mouche_...”

“ _Non_ , this is my path,” they said.

“Aren’t you going to need these?” Félix asked, holding one of their guns. It was custom, a beautiful piece, with an ornate silver _fleur-de-lis_ surrounded by fly wings on the stock.

“ _Non_ ,” they replied. “Take them where they’ll do some good.”

“Are you just giving up?” Anna asked.

Beelzebub stood up from their desk. They clung to the desk as they hobbled, barefoot, around it. When there was no longer a desk between them, the students could see Beelzebub’s leg. Trousers torn, wound bandaged, bright red blood seeping into the bandage. The bruising across their pale shin was tinged green and the sickly smell of rot accompanied them.

“The bullet shattered the bone,” they explained. “I’m done, one way or the other. No more roof-running for me.”

The two understood.

But Anna wept. Félix held her.

“It will not be long,” they said, turning away from the weeping children. “They know where I am. I sent them a message.”

“What kind of message?”

“The kind that you pin to a dead sniper,” Beelzebub replied. “I will die--if not tonight, then soon. We all die, _mes petits_. These things they cannot kill--our love, our truth, our message. Leave me, now. To Bordeaux with you both. Get married at whatever little church you find--don’t wait for this to be over. And when it is over...start a newspaper and have a pile of babies. I...love you both. And everyone.”

That much was true. The wound was fake, but Beelzebub did love the children whose hearts held so much passion and who were willing to risk their lives for the dream of a free Paris.

“We’ll name our firstborn after you!” Félix declared.

“You’ll name your firstborn _La Mouche_?” they chuckled. “That’s dreadful.”

“ _Euh...non_. Your Christian name?” Anna asked. Her tears shined like glass under the light of a single bare bulb, the only light besides the open window.

“My Christian name?” Beelzebub asked. “It’s Remy.”

“Remy?”

Well, that was close enough to the truth, wasn’t it?

“ _Oui, c’est ça_.” Beelzebub turned to face them. “Go. Use the roof. They’ll be here soon.”

The children took their rucksacks and left through the window. Beelzebub watched them go, hopping from roof to roof, away from them and towards the rest of the resistance.

Hell’s plan called for them to surrender to the Nazis, and if the execution was to be public, they were to allow themself to be discorporated by the humans and whatever angels were working with them. Probably Gabriel. He held rank amongst the humans, these days. _Gruppenführer_ Gabriel Engels, if memory served. Now in charge of rounding up French dissidents.

Could be worse, Beelzebub mused. Gabriel would make things quick and clean. He wasn’t as cruel as most of the angels. Just efficient.

It would be nice to see him again. They’d been away from Hell long enough to shake their pervasive apathy. It was always good to see him when they could actually feel something besides the endless blue buzz of Hell.

Gabriel reminded Beelzebub of who they truly were. It would be _good_ to see him again.

Still, as Beelzebub had managed to take care of their corporation these long centuries, they’d never experienced discorporation. It could be painful and messy.

Hopefully, Gabriel would be willing to take advice.

Hanging was impossible. They’d just dangle as long as Gabriel let them. They’d start healing themself as soon as they were unconscious.

That could also make a firing squad difficult. If they weren’t killed immediately, they’d start healing themself.

No, it would have to be decapitation. Gabriel was swift with his sword, but protocol would probably demand the guillotines that the Germans were suddenly so fond of. That would surely do for a political dissident, a smuggler, a shit-stirrer.

Surely, he would not be fool enough to send them to the camps. Oh, but if he did...

They could make all kinds of trouble there.

They sat in their hard wooden chair, watching the night come. Restless fingers drummed against the windowsill, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat. Would they get to see the moon?

No, there was a truck below, followed by two fine German cars. Yes, this was correct.

The truck unloaded far more men than could ever be necessary to capture one human. Yet, too few to capture a demon.

If that demon wasn’t ready to come quietly.

They heard boots, now. On the stairs. Many of them. The fancy cars had not yet divulged their occupants. The Archangel was playing things safe, and Beelzebub couldn’t blame him. How would he know that they were ordered to surrender?

They turned their chair around to face the wolves at their door.

“ _Un, deux, trois!”_

A boot slammed into the door. It burst open, and a small swarm of armed men stormed into the small room, pointing their guns at Beelzebub.

_Schutzstaffel_. SS. Freshly minted. French boys. Of course.

“ _La Mouche_!” exclaimed the young man with the most decorations on his jacket. His voice was rich with triumph.

“ _Ah, oui. Bon travail. Vous m’avez trouvé..._ ” Beelzebub kept their hands on the desk, and spoke very calmly. “ _Où est votre chef_?”

The men parted to allow a tall redhaired woman to click through them in extravagantly high heels.

“ _Bonsoir, Michel_. _Comment ça va_?” Beelzebub asked.

“ _Mieux que vous_ ,” Michael returned.

From behind Michael, a cloying, currying little voice asked, “ _T’ai je manqué, petit_?”

Sandalphon stepped forward.

“You...” Beelzebub said. “I...did not give you permission to address me informally.”

“Oh, we’re old intimates, _cherie_ ,” he replied.

“Where’s Gabriel?” they demanded.

“You’ll be brought to him, after I’m done with you. Michael, the men, if you would be so kind.”

Michael nodded, a sardonic grin playing on her face. She turned. “ _Allons-y_!”

Beelzebub rolled their eyes and turned into a swarm of flies. And turned into a swarm of flies. And turned...

Their miracles were gone. Their stomach turned to ice.

God was present.

The men were gone, tromping down the stairs. Michael was at the very rear, but had not left the room. Not quite yet.

“ _Michel, attend! S'il vous plaît_!” Beelzebub cried out, the panic creeping into their voice. Sotto, they continued. “Don’t leave me alone with him!”

Michael looked over her shoulder and smirked. “You think I’ll save you?” She laughed. “You MUST be desperate.”

“Please...” Beelzebub said, softly. “You must know what he intends...”

“I suggest you give him what he wants.” Michael paused. “Why don’t you take a look out the window?”

Beelzebub turned away from the angels and rushed to the window. Their fake wound and fake limp forgotten. It couldn’t be...They’d sent the kids over the rooftops...

And yet, there below, they saw two dark figures. One small and slight, the other tall and broad. On their knees on the cement, bags over their heads, and wrists bound behind them. They wore the same dark clothing that they’d left the garret in.

Nuriel had a hand clamped on each of their shoulders. Her flinty eyes met Beelzebub’s, all haughtiness and self-satisfaction. Her corporation looked male, but it couldn’t be anyone else. She smirked up at Beelzebub, and pulled the sacks off of her captives.

Félix and Anna blinked up at them as the rest of the SS filed out of the building. Beelzebub gave the kids a tight nod, which they returned.

“What good are rooftops against wings, little fly?” Sandalphon asked. Beelzebub could feel the heat of him. He’d slipped right behind them while they were staring out the window. “Nuriel caught them for us.”

“Kill them, then.”

“They’ll feed the guillotine,” Sandalphon replied. “What happens to them before then, that’s up to you.”

His breath was hot and moist in their ear as he reached around them for the shutters and closed them. Then unlocked the window and slipped it down.

Beelzebub stared down at their fingers on the windowsill. “What do you want?”

His arm wrapped around their waist and his thick fingers pressed into their hair, shoving them forward. They felt his body against theirs, the hardness in his trousers, his breath on their neck as he sniffed them.

He released them, drawing the metal collar around their neck. A cold band that ensured that their missing miracles weren’t coming back.

“You’ve obviously got things wrapped up here, Sandy. I’m leaving,” Michael said, waving a merry hand. “I’ll be just outside if you need me. Shall I send the men back with Nuriel?”

“Yes, and our prisoners. Don’t bother with the executions quite yet. They’re still useful as hostages.”

“Right.” Michael shut the door behind her, and the room was very quiet.

“Does she really know?” Beelzebub asked, transitioning smoothly from French to the Angelic Tongue. “Does she really know what you plan to do to me?”

“I don’t know, pet,” he said, and the hand around their waist began undoing their belt. “She knows that I plan to interrogate you. You’ll give me something good enough to earn your friends a speedy death, hm?”

He unbuttoned their trousers. Beelzebub expected him to shove them down, but he did not. Instead, he reached inside.

Beelzebub held down their supper, but it was a struggle.

“What could I tell you that you don’t already know?” they asked, their voice a whisper as Sandalphon encircled them. Began running his hand over them.

Their stomach lurched again. They remembered his touch. It was a cruel thing. It brought them pain and blood. It wasn’t this. It wasn’t a supportive arm around the waist. It wasn’t gentle petting, hot fingertips brushing their Effort, slowly stirring their blood.

“You’re so very clever,” he said, stroking them. “You’ll think of something.”

They felt their mutinous flesh responding to him, felt themself begin to rise. Felt the mouth below moisten.

Sandalphon felt the rush of their blood, the wet heat below.

“You did miss me,” he said. He chuckled, laying kisses on the sliver of neck that showed above their collar. “Take off your clothes.”

Sandalphon released them and stepped back. They did not turn to face him. No, they could do this well enough without having to avoid his eyes--so cold and dark that they looked like pits.

Beelzebub unbuttoned their shirt. Their fingers were not clumsy, in spite of the slight tremor that ran through them. They discarded the shirt, then pulled up the undershirt beneath. They lifted it over their head, and let it fall on top of their button-down.

And he was on them again. The angel ran his hands over their bare chest. His touch was like fire across a snowfield. Beelzebub hated it, hated more that they didn’t have the miracles to shut off their body. Hated that his (shocking) gentleness was evoking a response.

His lips were on their skin again, this time on their shoulder blade. They put their hands back on the windowsill. His fingers scurried over their flesh like spiders--crawling, exploring, finding all the right places.

God was watching, maybe guiding him to all the spots that would light them up. Their helplessness and frustration trailed from their eyes, down their cheeks, and splashed on his chest.

“I’m being kind to you, and I get tears,” Sandalphon whispered against their skin. “Why do I even bother?”

“Don’t bother, then,” Beelzebub said.

“Heh...” Sandalphon grunted, grabbing them by the back of the head and shoving their face into the windowpane. Beelzebub felt the glass crack under their skin. “I don’t have to, pet.”

Beelzebub smiled against the jagged edges. This was better. This, they understood.

They closed their eyes as his teeth, his sharp gold teeth, entered their skin. They didn’t make a sound. Absolutely nothing to engage.

They could be a stone. They could be the still, deep water.

He ripped their trousers down and off of their legs. He was strong enough to do it, to shuck them like corn and discard the part that he didn’t need. Between the slats of the shutters, Beelzebub glimpsed the sunset surrender to the coming night.

Sandalphon dragged them away from the window and threw them across their little desk. It thumped with the force. Beelzebub’s arms didn’t make it out fast enough to cushion their fall. There was a loud crack--bone on wood. The room sparkled, and Beelzebub felt the impending night rise around them. They pressed a hand to their forehead.

_He cracked my skull_ , they thought.

But, by then, Sandalphon had kicked their legs apart. His hand was on their back, holding them down.

Beelzebub hadn’t wanted to go back to Earth. They hadn’t wanted the mission that they were now on, but Lucifer thought it would be good for them, and one did not just tell Lucifer no.

It had been fun, teaching the students how to run the roofs. How to make basic codes. How to signal each other. How to pack their bags so that the weight was evenly distributed. A few months in the sun tending to the beautiful young people who flocked to _La Mouche_ to save Paris--they should have known that there would be a price.

After Ekron, they should have well known.

They tried again, to turn into a swarm of flies and get away. To fight the collar that they knew they could not fight.

Behind them, they heard the rustle of his clothes. He was pressing against them. His flesh was hot, and they were not nearly wet enough. This was going to tear...

“Aren’t you supposed to TRY to resist temptation?” Beelzebub asked, their voice as bored as they could make it.

“What temptation?” Sandalphon replied. “I’m punishing a sinner.”

“We both know better than that.”

Sandalphon shoved inside, without any grace or finesse. He was strong. For all of his clumsiness, he was very strong.

He was also hot enough to burn. Beelzebub felt the room begin to spin with the pain in their head, the fire between their legs, the wet ache on their shoulder where he’d bitten them. Their stomach gave a final lurch, and they vomited their supper across their desk.

The room stank of half-digested stewed meat and vegetables, pilfered red wine, and stomach acid.

Sandalphon did not withdraw from their body. Instead, he leaned deeper in, sighed, and grabbed them up by the hair.

“You clench when you do that, you know?” he said, and they could hear his lips curling around the words. “It was nice.”

He dropped them back on the wet wood and began to thrust.

His thrusts were off-time, but powerful. Beelzebub kept heaving, some wet and some dry. His hand was in their hair again, shoving their face in the hot, fragrant puddle that they had made.

Their feet weren’t touching the floor. They could feel him tearing them, as they knew that he would. Besides the ripping of their flesh, there was the meatier feel of a hip threatening to dislocate. If they spread further for him, they might save the hip. But the ripping would be worse.

They tried to strike some happy medium. This couldn’t continue forever. Sandalphon had power, but lacked endurance. Besides which, how long had he been waiting for this? Thinking about this? He couldn’t possibly hold out much longer.

They hoped he finished soon.

It only took a few minutes. But it was the slow-walking moments of misery. Time encased in lead, thick with pain and helpless horror.

Finally, he slammed into them and spilled inside. He usually came with a grunt, but this time he started laughing. He released them, letting them slide off of the desk and off of his cock.

Beelzebub fell to the floor, curling around themself. They coughed and coughed, but there was nothing left in their stomach.

“Good God, I had forgotten,” he said. His voice was soft, full of awe. “But it has been a while, hasn’t it, poppet?”

“Not long enough,” Beelzebub replied, their voice hoarse from the vomiting.

“No more filth, I think,” he said as he cleaned their desk and their body with a miracle.

Their mouth no longer tasted of supper and stomach acid. The fake wound on their leg was gone. They ran a shaking hand over the pale, unblemished skin.

Sandalphon noticed.

“That was an elegant piece of stage dressing. I’ll give you that.”

Beelzebub shrugged. “I needed a reason to sacrifice myself for the cause.”

“I’m in no hurry to sacrifice you to anything,” he said. “I’ve missed this.”

“You’re telling me that you can’t find a single angel in Heaven worth your time?” They asked, pressing their hand to their injured head. “Nuriel was down there. I thought she liked you.”

“She’s not you,” he said, plainly.

The room was dim. Dimmer than it ought to be. A human would have already lost consciousness. God was unkind. They would be awake for this whole horrid affair.

Sandalphon used a miracle to hang his clothes in the empty wardrobe. He was as fussy as he always had been about his clothes. Not a speck on them, even though Beelzebub knew that some of the slick between their thighs (the slick that Sandalphon had cleaned with his miracles) was blood.

In that moment, Beelzebub knew that Hitler was right about three things--the Volkswagen, the _Autobahn_ , and Hugo Boss. Sandalphon usually looked like a mid-level businessman. An accountant or a traveling salesman, perhaps. Unintimidating, cloying, docile.

(Except for the gold teeth. Those were definitely intimidating.)

The black uniform of the SS made him look taller, stronger, more terrifying.

Now, nude and standing before them, the only thing that was intimidating about him was Beelzebub’s memory of the blood and pain of Ekron. He wore a different skin then. The Prophet Elijah's skin.

No mask, no suit, no pilfered human skin could hide his vileness. When he spoke, the words oozed from his lips like greasy pearls. When he moved, Beelzebub was surprised that he didn’t trail slime. When he touched them, he burned his filth into their skin. He named his lust their sin, and God never punished him for it.

Sandalphon smiled, and that beatific grin almost made him seem peaceful. Satisfied. Beelzebub knew better. They were not surprised when he grabbed them by the hair and dragged them to the bed.

He sat down heavily, causing the springs to sing. He silenced the mattress with another miracle. “This mattress is terrible. Your commitment to verisimilitude is admirable, but no longer necessary.”

The quilt, heavy and honest, changed into a creamy silk duvet as the bed began to expand. Beelzebub yelped as Sandalphon lifted them onto his lap by their hair. The expanding bed occupied the space that they had recently vacated. Now, settled on his lap, he allowed them a moment of quiet. They could feel his soft belly on their back, his breath on their shoulder.

The tears were flowing again, as he reached around them. As his fingers drifted down.

In spite of the pain, they were hard. Maybe, because of the pain. Corporations had some funny wiring.

Beelzebub stayed silent. It was the only form of protest they had. Experience told them that he liked every sound they made--screams and whimpers and (on those few occasions that he decided to give them pleasure) moans. Silence shortened their encounters.

Was Michael still outside? Probably. Listening? Doubtful. Sandalphon would have used the necessary miracles to keep her from hearing anything.

The kids...maybe something could still be done...

“What do you want for Félix and Anna?” they asked, as he peeled down their foreskin. As he circled the very sensitive flesh underneath. “Ah! For their safety!”

They pressed against him. Maybe with Nuriel temporarily assigned a male corporation, he’d had some time to practice. In Ekron, he’d wanted nothing to do with their cock. Sandalphon had forced them to create a vulva before collaring them.

_He’s gotten good at this_. Beelzebub flushed as he stroked them.

“You’re still concerned with your humans?”

They reached a hand up and back, cupping his cheek. He didn’t expect the touch. He took a quick, deep breath as they traced his soft jaw.

“What do you want in exchange for my humans? My kindness?” they asked. Beelzebub plucked his hand from them and moved quickly, turning to face the angel. Knees on either side of his thighs. They rocked on him, feeling him respond. “If I can give it, you can have it. Please...”

“I can take everything that I need from you--”

“It’s sweeter this way,” they replied.

They lowered their lips to his. All angels smelled of some sort of plant--Sandalphon was no exception. His corporation smelled very strongly of tree resin. Myrrh and frankincense. Amber and sandalwood.

The stench of him would linger on their skin and in their nose for weeks after he freed them. Whenever that might be.

His hunger, more searing than anything Beelzebub had been cursed with, ran through his skin, his muscles, his blood and breath. Beelzebub felt it burning under the tongue that he forced between their lips, in the fingers that tightened in their hair.

Their arms went around his neck, fingernails brushing the fringe of hair that circled his head.

He’d never known their lips, not like this. He was breathless when they parted, and his eyes looked damp.

His thick hands found their shoulders. “Tell me where we can find De Gaulle, and I’ll let those two live.”

“On a plane to the States,” they lied. “He’s gone.”

His hands clenched on their shoulders. The pain was crushing. “You lied to me...”

Beelzebub smiled at him through the pain. “You started it.”

Sandalphon growled as he threw Beelzebub onto the bed. The world spun with the force that he used (and their concussion), and he was on them, then. He flipped them onto their back, grabbed their wrists and forced them over their head.

They looked away from him. The fight was gone from them. What good would it do to resist? He wanted them to fight. He liked it. Better to surrender. He would grow bored.

“You think you know what I’m going to do. I can see it in your eyes, and you’re wrong,” Sandalphon said.

He was between their legs, his heavy flesh burning against them. The cool of the duvet mixed with the heat of him.

Sandalphon took them in his hand and laid an achingly tender kiss on their jaw. He stroked them, and they squeezed their eyes shut, burying their face in the crook of their arm. They certainly did not intend to make the terrible keening sound that came from them.

So much for being a stone, being the still water.

Eventually, their keening turned to words. “Not this, please. Not this.”

“How did you grow to hate pleasure so very much?” Sandalphon practically crooned. “God intended you to be the personification of gluttony. You are, possibly, the most ascetic little beast that I have ever known.”

They tried to turn it off, the warmth that built below their belly. Beelzebub knew that what was happening to them was as involuntary as a sneeze, but that knowledge did not help them.

“Please stop,” they asked, knowing that he wouldn’t.

“I think if I had hours, I would,” he said, whispering the words into Beelzebub’s exposed ear. “I would stop and start. I would touch you like this, make you fill those lovely breasts of yours and drink from you. I’d get my teeth in you, bleed you...Your teats are dry as bones, pet. But I have your blood, at least.”

The teeth in their breast, around the nipple, sinking into the soft flesh there--that’s what pushed them over the edge. They cried out, a weak yelp, and spilled over his horrible hand.

Sandalphon held them tight, slowing his strokes. His tongue played at the wound he had made, and Beelzebub wept into their arm.

“Sweet...you are so sweet,” he murmured.

They opened as eye to peer down at him. He was looking up, lips still bloody, his eyes dark and penetrating as he brought his fingers to his lips and tasted the fluid that coated them.

Beelzebub felt themself flush. The few times that Sandalphon had forced them to climax in the past left them feeling the same--shamed and exposed. They would take whatever pain he chose to give them over this.

“This...might be better than the milk, pet,” he said, softly. “I want more.”

They heaved again, but there was nothing left to vomit.

Sandalphon’s miracles worked fast. The strong, cream silks wrapped around their wrists and pulled tight. They found themself spread across the duvet. The silks bound their ankles to the footboard. They were trapped. Helpless.

Sandalphon slid between their legs and began seeking out any drops that missed his hand. He groomed them gently, with tongue and lips across their belly, the inside of their thighs.

Their bonds began to move, and their body was sculpted into the position that Sandalphon commanded. Silk bands bound their ankles to their thighs, and pulled their knees up.

Sandalphon nodded his approval at the way that they had opened for him. They could not protect themself from him.

His dropped back to his former position, on his belly, between their legs. His mouth went lower than it had been, below their cock, and then his tongue was inside them. They shivered from his heat and his gentleness.

And the shock. They still had a head injury. The rapid changes in blood pressure were not easy on a damaged corporation.

Frankly, neither was the choking fear.

Their body cooperated with Sandalphon, moistening for his curious tongue. Cock stiffening as he wrapped a hand around them, sending their already overstimulated nerves screaming.

The vagus nerve was having trouble keeping up. Violent, unwanted pleasure mixed with nausea, and Beelzebub started heaving again.

Sandalphon stopped and knelt up. “Well, if you’re going to start with that again, I ought not waste it.”

He slipped inside them easily. The heat and the pressure of him were, unfortunately, nice. Beelzebub looked away, tears still streaming from their eyes. They heaved again, and Sandalphon sighed.

“Heavenly, my dear. Positively Heavenly.”

He was more certain this time, and more controlled. This wasn’t the frantic ride on the desk. This was something that Sandalphon had never showed them. Something that he had perhaps not gained before he kidnapped them in Ekron. Something he may have developed with Nuriel. A gentle sureness. Finesse.

Beelzebub was keening again. It felt good. He felt good. The burning pain of his skin did not interfere with the sweet tingle of their nerves, with the smooth motion of his flesh inside them. He leaned down and fed on their mouth.

That was nice, too. Unfortunately.

When did Sandalphon learn how to kiss, how to touch, how to light up their corporation? They hated him for what he was doing. For what they were feeling.

Nobody ever touched them kindly.

With the pleasure came the wracking heaves. Sandalphon sighed with each one. He was moving faster, faster now.

The cloying smell of resins grew stronger as Sandalphon began to sweat. He buried his face in the sweet meat of their neck, laying kisses there as his soft belly rolled over their needy cock.

He was growing warmer as his strokes grew swifter and shorter. The sickly-sweet smell of him kept Beelzebub gagging. Sandalphon plunged into them, deeper, more syncopated now.

He cried out their old name as he spilled into them.

Sandalphon released the duvet and knelt up, carefully. He stayed inside, running his hands over their bound legs, down to their frustrated (and frankly confused) cock.

“Please...” Beelzebub whimpered. “Please stop.”

“When I’ve taken everything that you can give me, poppet. And it seems to me that you have more to give.”

He slipped out of them. Crawled backwards, and settled himself between their legs.

Their head fell back as his very hot mouth enveloped them. They bit hard into their lip and whimpered.

_This is Your show, Father,_ they thought. _Are You enjoying this? Is this what You want from me?_

He sucked their cock as he’d once fed upon their breasts. Hard draw, steady pulls. He worked them with the precision of a Swiss watch.

They felt the pressure building, the tension pulling at them. In spite of his predictable motions, the rough way that he handled them, they felt themselves rise with each bob of his head. They whimpered as he lowered his lips to the base of them, and again, and again.

Sandalphon’s hands were on their thighs, holding them open with more force than was necessary. They could feel the blood leaking from their broken capillaries, the bruises rising in the shape of his fingers. The pain, the slow flare of it across their inner thighs, the scream of both hips, overextended and held--it mixed obscenely with the pleasure that Sandalphon drew from them.

They were close, terribly close. He must have felt it as well, releasing one of their thighs and driving his fingers into them.

The pain of his rough penetration was the last sensation that their screaming nerves could take. They cried out weakly as they gave the angel what he required from them.

They wept. The sobs wracked their whole body. This would be over soon. Another Archangel would take their head off of their shoulders, and it would be done. Done.

“There, there, poppet,” Sandalphon said, sliding a gentle hand over their thigh. Beelzebub shivered at his touch. “I’m done with you, for now. If I tarry much longer, Michael will start to wonder.”

He stood up, stretched in the light of the single bare bulb that hung in the middle of the room. He used a miracle to clean himself, and another for Beelzebub. Sandalphon sat back down on the bed, brushing Beelzebub’s cheek with his fingers.

They didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t cry out.

“Your humans will die a clean death,” he said, in a tone that he probably thought was reassuring. It was patronizing, more than anything. “But I must have gotten something out of you...give me something for Michael, would you?”

“You have it all,” they said wearily. “I was supposed to surrender myself, and die.”

“Make you a martyr, hm?” Sandalphon said. “I think not. No.”

He stood up and his clothes seemed to unroll over his skin. Another miracle. He sat at their desk and pulled a pad and pen from his breast pocket. He jotted something down, quickly.

“This should take care of you for me,” he said. “Alas, I must make for Bordeaux. Your Brigadier General is a busy man. He needs to be stopped.”

“If God wills it,” Beelzebub said.

“Do you think God is on your side?” Sandalphon laughed. “Truly? I have you trussed up like a Christmas goose, and...I’m sorry, pet. It’s just so ludicrous.”

“I didn’t say that. I said that De Gaulle will be stopped _if God wills it_.”

“And what does a creature like you know about God?”

“I know whose side God is on--Her own. You’re the fool if you believe anything else,” they replied. “I know that this war cannot last forever. No war lasts forever. Concessions must be made.” Another heave, a strong one. “I know that She wanted me like this. She wanted you to do just what you did to me. She took away my miracles to give you the upper hand. I know that you wouldn’t be able to hold your own against me--if God did not give you that advantage.”

Sandalphon smiled a strange smile. It was not a happy thing.

“Perhaps, someday, we’ll find out,” he said. “But not today.”

He released them from the silks and the bed returned to its former size and shape. A small garret bed, with loud springs and a simple quilt covering it.

Beelzebub felt their clothes slither over their skin. Pants, trousers (mended, they noted), undershirt, shirt. Naked feet and bare head.

They did not bother to sit up. They laid in their thin bed, rubbing their wrists and trying to regain some feeling. Their head hurt, and the rest of them felt weird. Their nerves were frayed. Nothing moved quite right. Their stomach was unsettled, yet very obviously empty.

“Come, pet, make your promises and kiss me--if you want me to let you out of here.”

“No,” Beelzebub said.

He was on them again, somehow more threatening in the uniform. Between their legs, his weight pressing them into the protesting mattress, one hand landing on the side of their head and the other wrapping around their throat. He paused, not holding tightly, not bruising. He stared into their eyes, his flaming hot fingers scorching their skin.

“Your humans,” he said softly. “Cooperate with me. I still have them.”

“No,” Beelzebub said again. “Not until you promise to free them.”

“I can’t do that! Nuriel plucked them off of a roof! What if they were to say something about that, hm?”

Beelzebub pushed his hand off of their throat and was surprised that he allowed it. They leaned up, brushing his lips with theirs. It wasn’t a contract. It sealed nothing.

It was a plea.

“Let them go,” Beelzebub repeated. “Who would believe them? And, if anyone did, they’d know that God was on the Nazis’ side. That’s good for you, isn’t it?”

Sandalphon contemplated this. Finally, he said, “I’m not giving them back your silly manifesto--or those ostentatious guns. Sadly, you will remain nobody and nothing, my little fly.”

“I understand.” They kept their voice level, tried not to let their eagerness show. “But don’t hurt my humans.”

“What’s so special about these two? Spent a lot of time in their corruption, did you?”

“No,” Beelzebub said. “They’re nothing special, honestly. But...they’re children...” Their voice cracked. “And they’re in love. They should have happy lives. They should have _lives_.”

Sandalphon pet their cheek again, running a thumb under their eye to wipe their tears away. The gentleness of that gesture ached.

“Fine. Your humans will be freed--unharmed--and you will never inform anyone of this.”

“You promise me that you will keep them safe.”

Sandalphon paused. “I swear it, poppet.”

Beelzebub leaned up, before he could figure out that he’d just handed them a victory. They kissed him, allowed him to breach their mouth with his tongue, to violate them. But their heart soared when they felt the contract seal.

“Let’s get you ready for Michael, then.”

Sandalphon grabbed them off the bed and forced them to their knees in front of him, facing away. He pulled their hands behind their back and secured them. No more gentle silk. He used coarse rope. He gagged them with a cotton handkerchief and dropped a bag over their face.

He pat them on the head. Pain sparked in front of their eyes, but Beelzebub did not flinch from him.

“Stay,” he ordered.

They stayed. From their knees on the cold, wood floor, Beelzebub could hear Sandalphon open the door.

“Did you get anything from them?” Michael asked.

“Confirmation of what we already know. De Gaulle is in Bordeaux. I’m heading there.”

“Safe journey, then,” she replied. “And them?”

“This is for Gabriel,” he said, and Beelzebub could hear the flick of paper as it transitioned from one set of hands to another. “And so is the demon. I assume you can get her where she needs to be.”

“Of course, I can,” Michael said. Beelzebub could hear her eyes roll. “They’re still collared?”

“Yes. Certainly. But don’t underestimate her,” Sandalphon replied. “She is dangerous. And, like all of her kind, she is very good with words. Don’t take out the gag.”

“I don’t think we’ll have anything to discuss,” Michael said, dryly.

“Good. She’s all yours.”

Michael drew Beelzebub up on their feet. “Come on, you,” she said.

Beelzebub obeyed as best they could. Sandalphon was no healer. He cleaned them, but he had not healed them. They still had a head injury. It complicated things.

The world shifted beneath them. Still, they ended up on their feet.

“Oh,” Sandalphon said. “Release the demon’s humans. Have Nuriel tail them. They’ll lead us straight to De Gaulle. I’ll drive ahead, to start logistics for De Gaulle.”

Beelzebub shrank a bit, for effect. Yes, they’d give him his moment of triumph. Their lip curled around their gag. A self-satisfied, smug little grin.

De Gaulle was heading for London, via a convoluted flight path. The sun had set some time ago, so he wasn’t in Bordeaux anymore. He was in the air. Sandalphon would never catch up.

And if Sandalphon killed their humans when he realized that he’d been fooled?

They would feel the contract break, and then the whole world would know how weak he was for the flesh of a demon.


	2. L'eau Profonde et Calme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel receives his prisoner, and finds out that Beelzebub is, as always, a few steps ahead of him. Sandalphon asked him to keep a close eye on them, and he's not letting them out of his sight.
> 
> Beelzebub, given a cot for their stay with Gabriel, falls asleep and dreams of their time in Eden. Of God's idea of justice and mercy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: KJV God, God is a bastard, violence, graphic violence, blood, Gabriel is amazingly clueless at the precise wrong time to be clueless, Nazis, head injury, strict interpretation of Heaven through a very KJV-Bible lens, mass murder ordered by God, the origin of wankwings, mention of masturbation, Sandalphon
> 
> Iblis is Crowley, pre-Fall.

The sun had gone to bed about an hour prior, and Gabriel was standing at the palladian windows of his office. Most of the high-ranking Nazis had taken a different building, on a main thoroughfare. He and his small group of elite, local SS had taken this building. The offices had previously been used for a small law office. Besides the name of the firm (Rosenberg _et Associates, Avocats_ ) being removed from the pebbled glass door into the office, not much had been changed. The wood floors squeaked under his boots as they must have squeaked under Mr. Rosenberg’s fine loafers.

The Rosenbergs were gone now, rounded up and deposited in one of the humans’ camps. Probably dead by now. Harvested.

This reaping, (one of many, over the centuries) was yielding heavily. It was an important lead-up to the End of Times. Their quota was 80 million souls, and they would probably exceed it.

Most of those souls were heading straight to Hell.

Gabriel wasn’t complaining. It was all part of the Divine Plan, of course. Hell was supposed to have resources to spare, going into Armageddon. The Antichrist would be using Hell’s reserves to reshape the planet, so those coffers had to be filled. After the world was reshaped, the forces of Heaven and Hell would be on equal footing.

As equal as they could be. The angels would always have God on their side.

He’d taken a few moments away from his maps and plans and those...material objects.

Oh, he always forgot the word.

Books. Yes, books.

He’d been tracing the movements of the French Liberation Movement. They were too slick. Just too good. And too well-equipped. He, very reasonably, expected that they were receiving infernal assistance.

Aziraphale had said (when pressed, that whinging incompetent) that he believed the demon Crowley had slithered back to England--after starting this war, of course.

He did not suspect Crowley, wily though he undoubtedly was. No, the word on the lips of all the spies and students was _La Mouche_. The Fly.

It could be a human operative, or a group of them, but Gabriel didn’t think so. He had thought (even before a note pinned to the chest of a dead sniper confirmed it to him) that something this slick must have come from his infernal counterpart.

Still, it was strange. Beelzebub was awfully important to be wasted, on what? Assisting human spies? It made no sense at all. But, then again, who else could it be? These spies had effectively destroyed rail lines, stolen tons of food from Nazi supply trains, and a few who managed to get jobs with the new regime had “lost” paperwork on a few thousand camp-bound Jews (who somehow disappeared with their papers).

Messing with Gabriel’s quotas. And for what, anyways?

What WERE the demons playing at? This harvest was for Hell, after all. It’s not like Heaven was open to any of the Jews dying in the camps, nor the Asians bleeding out in the Pacific theatre. Jesus Christ was the key to the kingdom--all of the non-believers were going straight into the Lake of Fire.

The Golden Shores would collect the souls of the Believers. There were very few of those. Comparatively.

The streets were black, slick with summer drizzle. The reflection of the street lamps glimmered on the surface of the glazed asphalt. He ran a hand over his eyes, then slipped his hand into his pocket, closed around the slip of paper inside.

“ _Mes amis, finissons cela? Alors, venez pour moi. Vous me trouverez--_ ”

And then the address. It looked like a trap. Gabriel thought, not for the first time, that he should have collected them himself.

It wasn’t a trap. It might’ve _looked_ like a trap, but Gabriel knew better. It was honest. The demon Prince never lied to him.

Not because of some inherent honesty. Of course not. They were a demon.

They were truthful because they knew that lying to him was an exercise in futility.

Sandalphon had asked to go and retrieve them. Gabriel could find nothing wrong with that. He knew how to handle the demon (he’d done it before), and (God knows) they were a tricky little beast.

The first sinner, with a soul darker than any other. The black honey. Something sweet that has been corrupted.

At any rate, it was Sandalphon’s sniper--stationed on the roof of a building that Sandalphon had scouted himself--who had the misfortune of delivering the note. Pinned to his dead chest. The spotter, equally deceased, had the red and black flag of the anarchists draped over him.

The sniper and his spotter were looking for the roof runners. They found them.

Cause of death for both was a bullet wound to the back of the head. Beelzebub wasn’t the shooter, of course. The Prince was not so foolish to kill a human themself. It would negate every contract.

But he knew the script on the note. And he knew the scent on the note. (Not flowers, but the green parts--dandelion stems and aloe and the fresh scent of the earth in springtime. Hint of honey. He’d pressed that little piece of paper to his nose far more times than was prudent. They were the black honey. Sweet corruption, that one.) The Lord of the Flies wrote the note. May have even pinned it on the dead man.

But someone else, one of their operatives, must have handled the execution. Beelzebub wouldn’t hurt a human.

It was Sandalphon’s human that died, and he was more accustomed to fieldwork than Gabriel. So, it was agreed that Sandalphon would go after Beelzebub (his old enemy from his days as the Prophet Elijah.) Michael would go with him, on point. Nuriel provided backup support.

Gabriel knew that the little Prince was bad for him. Wanting to capture them was a symptom of the rot they put in him every time he saw them. Wanting to see them, another symptom. Worrying--worrying about a demon--

Everything that they touched decayed in their hands. He clenched his jaw. Unclenched it. Thought about their current sins.

While Gabriel waited for word, he’d tried to untie the Gordian Knot that was Beelzebub’s operation. He’d had minimum success, but he’d managed to isolate a few things for discussion whenever the Prince arrived.

 _If_ the Prince arrived, and didn’t manage to slip through Sandalphon’s fingers.

Nuriel had reported to Gabriel that Michael and Sandalphon had collected Beelzebub, just before sundown. Sandalphon planned to question them first, to try to get the location of the Brigadier General that was causing them so much trouble. After that, Nuriel said, they were to be brought to Gabriel for “final dispensation.”

Discorporation, Gabriel assumed. That seemed dodgy. Against some contract, agreement, or treaty.

They’d come too quietly, from Nuriel’s description of events. Did they want him to discorporate them? To break some obscure agreement that Gabriel didn’t know about?

They were a tricky little creature. Every time he thought he’d won, they were already ahead of him. He spent most of his existence pursuing them, being led about, unable to stop them.

They were a force.

He sometimes wondered what they might have accomplished on the right side of things, but that was dangerous thinking. One does not EVER think of any demon being on one’s side. He wasn’t supposed to want a demon to be that close to him.

Nuriel herself had collected two of the demon’s humans--roof runners escaping to the resistance. (Maybe it had been one of them who had killed the sniper? Hopefully Sandalphon got some answers. Some closure for his loss.)

Nuriel told Gabriel that Sandalphon had asked that the humans be kept in cells as hostages until he was done with Beelzebub. Eventually, Sandalphon would get the information that he needed, and the humans could be executed.

The thing that got Nuriel’s teeth gnashing and dropped the temperature in Rosenberg’s offices was the missing guns.

Apparently, Beelzebub had sent their humans along with a manifesto of some sort, and a pair of gaudy pistols. Those things had been collected by Nuriel, but were missing from the transport truck.

Nuriel delivered her report, and then stalked off to question Beelzebub’s humans to locate the missing items. And she would have to speak to the SS that had accompanied them. Ugly or not, those guns were worth money. The SS were not wealthy men.

Most importantly, she needed to find that manifesto.

The Lord of the Flies had a way with words. Even Milton got THAT right about them. That manifesto might...what did the humans say? _Light a fire_ under the resistance. Might be a real _shot in the arm_.

Sandalphon ought to be back soon. Gabriel would be able to ask _La Mouche_ about their guns and their manifesto himself.

He had other questions, ones that he seriously doubted that he’d get answers to. How did they steal a whole supply train without a trace of infernal miracles? Where did they hide all those Jews? Why were they even ON Earth?

That’s the place to start.

He sighed, wondering why Sandalphon was keeping him waiting. It was not like him. But demons were difficult, and he needed to find that Brigadier General. There were rumors of De Gaulle getting out of France, and that did not bode well for the Nazis. If De Gaulle managed it, then his message (and potentially, Beelzebub’s) would get out.

Words had consequences. It worried Gabriel that it would shorten their window for the reaping.

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the cool glass. When he opened them, the sleek black car pulled up in front of the building.

 _Finally_ , Gabriel thought.

He stepped away from the window and waited. It did not take long.

Michael knocked, but did not wait for Gabriel to tell her to come in. She opened the door, but she was not the first person to enter the room.

“Gabriel,” she said, with a curt nod.

“Michael,” he returned.

She shoved before her a small person with a black sack over their head. Their wrists were bound behind their back, but they were not struggling against Michael. They stumbled--their clumsiness quite uncharacteristic. Their feet were bare, he noticed as Michael forced them to their knees on the rug in front of him. She pulled the sack off.

Beelzebub blinked up at him. Their blue eyes, wide and innocent, were the only part of them untouched by the fall. Their mouth was deformed by a tight gag. Without the sack on their head, he could see the restraining collar--how Sandalphon had managed to get one around their neck was a mystery.

But he’d managed to subdue them in Ekron, once.

They looked more rumpled than he had ever seen them, and yet, cleaner than he had expected. A nasty bruise marred their forehead. It looked swollen.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“ _La Mouche_ ,” Michael replied.

“I _guessed_ that. I meant that thing on their head.” Gabriel gestured at the bruise.

“They must have resisted,” Michael said. She untied the gag and yanked it roughly from their mouth. “Tell him that you resisted.”

“I resisted,” they said. Their voice was soft--threadbare as old muslin--but their words were well-formed. They looked away from him when they spoke.

“Of course, you did,” Michael said, rather proud of herself.

Gabriel had known the Lord of the Flies for a very long time. They deflected and demurred, but they had never lied to him.

They knew that he’d be able to tell. Archangel of Communication, and all. He could tell when people lied to him.

Not that he always commented on it. In fact, he usually let the first lie (or hundred, in the case of--say--Aziraphale) slip past and waited for something juicier to show up.

He could tell the shades of grey in a lie. He could tell half-truths from near truths, damaging lies from kindly ones. And Beelzebub knew that he could.

So Gabriel knew that Beelzebub had just told a lie. Not a cruel one, just a complete and intentional misstatement of the truth. Parroting Michael...who believed every word of what she said.

They did not resist. And Sandalphon struck them...anyways?

Sandalphon wouldn’t. Never without God’s approval. Did God command that the little Prince be punished?

It wouldn’t be the first time, but surely, Gabriel would have been informed.

And, most likely, would have been forced to witness it. As he had the first time.

“This is for you,” Michael said, handing Gabriel a folded note.

Gabriel unfolded it.

 _Gabriel, I hope this finds you well. I’m off to Bordeaux to deal with the rest of Lord Beelzebub’s humans. De Gaulle is there, and I reckon the French resistance will crumble without his leadership. Hell intended for Beelzebub to become a martyr to the Allied cause. Please do not allow that to happen. Keep an eye on her for me, would you? I may require more information from her. She is wily--wilier than most of her kind. I do not recommend removing the gag, but if you must, please remember that all demons are liars._ ”

It was signed with Sandalphon’s sigil.

He did not mention the demon putting up a struggle. But Sandalphon knew that Gabriel would know if he wrote lies in his letter. He might’ve neglected it. Might’ve neglected that God ordered some kind of punishment.

He looked down at the demon, whose eyes were on M. Rosenberg’s fine Persian rug. They were so small. How hard did Sandalphon hit them? And for what reason?

Harming a demon outside of direct, God-mandated combat (or punishment) was against a slew of treaties. Contracts would have broken. Gabriel would have been informed, would have felt the contracts break.

The little demon must’ve done _something_. Something to force Sandalphon’s hand.

“Everything alright?” Michael asked. She looked concerned. “The note?”

“Just a note. Asking me to keep them in their skin. Sandalphon wants to question them again, once he acquires De Gaulle.”

Beelzebub made a horrible sound then. A loud, dry wretch. They did not look up from the carpet. The noise startled him, and Michael jumped.

“Ah...um...one other problem,” Gabriel said. “According to Nuriel, their guns are missing, and so is their...manifesto.”

He looked at Beelzebub who smiled up at him. A wicked little grin. If trouble could be condensed into an expression, this is what it would look like.

“Answer him,” Michael said.

“He didn’t ask a question,” the demon returned.

Gabriel sighed and rolled his eyes, “What happened to the guns? And the manifesto?”

Their smile changed. They looked smug. Triumphant.

Demons were difficult. Princes were worse. This Prince was the worst.

“Had Nuriel been in any way competent at her job,” Beelzebub began, “she might have noticed that the guns in her hands were not guns at all. They were imps.”

“Imps?” Michael asked.

“Yes. Imps. Transformed into guns. I wasn’t going to use REAL guns,” Beelzebub said, as if Michael was the idiot. “What if they’d gone off on accident? I wasn’t going to risk killing some human.” They paused. Their eyes were cold and appraising. “That’s what you people do...not us.”

“Where ARE they?” Gabriel demanded, leaning down, an inch from Beelzebub’s face.

“Gone, I reckon,” they said, with a sweet smile. “Run away. Escaped. With my words. Headed directly for the presses of the Allies.”

“Fuck,” Gabriel said.

“What’s the problem?” Michael said. “We got them. Who cares about their guns or their silly little manifesto?”

“I care,” Gabriel said. “Words are weapons--can you just trust me on this? Words are kind of MY THING.” He sighed, and tried to explain. “The pen is mightier than the sword. Laws sheath or bare swords, and a particularly passionate plea can supersede laws.” He could hear the panic in his voice, and he did not like it. “If that manifesto gets out, it’s going to be the rallying cry that the humans need. We’re all going to suffer, and that little cretin knows it!”

They smiled at him. A real smile.

Gabriel had seen Beelzebub only once before their Fall. He remembered them being beautiful, as an angel. He could still see it when they smiled.

Of course, that was before what Sandalphon did to them. And after? Hanging up by rings driven through their wings, buzzing and mewling, nude but for the bloodstains and the few feathers that were pasted to them. Their skin sliced to ribbons and leaking blood on the feathers that gathered around them like snowdrifts.

A fragile and broken child, crying with a voice that he had known--had KNOWN--was incapable of forming words. A defenseless child. An example of what God did to those who did not obey.

They were heartbreaking to look upon.

For, though they had not yet been gifted with speech, he could hear truth in their keening. That they were innocent of the crime that they’d bled for.

The crime that started the Great Rebellion.

“The manifesto is out of your grasp, Archangel,” they said, pulling Gabriel out of the past.

“Uh...we have your friends,” Gabriel said, remembering that the past was a dangerous place to dwell, and putting it away.

“You can only kill them once,” Beelzebub replied. “You might want to make it count.”

“What does that even mean?” Michael asked.

“It means that hostages are inefficient,” Beelzebub said. “And it’s too late for that manifesto, so...”

“So we shouldn’t waste your humans,” Gabriel finished.

Beelzebub inclined their head, very slightly, and nodded. “Exactly.”

“What did Sandalphon get out of the interrogation?” Gabriel asked Michael.

“De Gaulle is in Bordeaux. He doesn’t know precisely where. He wants us to release their humans and follow them. He’s driving ahead.”

“They just...came quietly? And told him this?”

“They resisted. They said so.”

“They lied,” Gabriel said.

“You...lied?” Michael asked.

“You told me to say some words,” they said, with a shrug. “I said them.”

Small and broken, on their knees in his office, and somehow they STILL maintained control over the whole room.

They’d done it before, on a wood scaffold in the center of the Garden. They spread their corruption and a third of Heaven’s angels Fell. For them. For the black honey.

Gabriel did not know how they did it.

Without words, they’d inspired a revolution.

With words, they were more dangerous.

“Release their humans,” Gabriel said. “Follow them, as Sandalphon wants you to. Nuriel showed herself to them...so they can’t be allowed to tell anyone about that. You’ll see to that, of course.”

“Don’t kill them,” Beelzebub commanded.

Commanded! From their knees they still issued commands.

“Yeah, you’re not in charge here, Sunshine,” Gabriel countered.

“‘Sunshine’?” they asked, and the faintest trace of blood crept into their cheeks. “I did not know that we were at the pet names part of our relationship.”

Michael snickered and Gabriel flushed. This was not embarrassment, but rage. They could do that, twist his words around and use them against him. He was supposed to be the Archangel of Communication. Frankly, they were often better with words, and that annoyed him deeply.

“Archangel, you might want to ask Sandalphon before you do something rash.”

The demon was smirking up at him. They knew something. Something that he did not.

“You made an agreement with Sandalphon. An oath, didn’t you?”

“I did,” they replied. “Kill them if you must, but you’ll not be happy with the results.”

“What’s so special about these humans?”

“Kill them and find out.”

They were still smirking. The gall of it. The temerity of _them_.

“I can see why Sandalphon struck you,” Michael said.

Gabriel agreed, but he wasn’t going to say it out loud. “Michael, find Nuriel. She held those imps in her hands. She might be able to pick up their trail.”

“I doubt that,” Michael said.

“I do, too,” Gabriel agreed. “But it will keep her out of my sight, and that would be a very good thing.”

Michael nodded. “Alright. What do you want to do with the demon?”

“They’re staying here. I’m not letting them get away,” Gabriel said. “They’re supposed to stay--in their corporation--until Sandalphon returns, and I’m going to be sure that they do.”

“I do not envy you,” she said. “I’m leaving, then.”

“Be careful,” Gabriel said. “You have no idea what those humans might be capable of.”

Beelzebub chuckled.

“You think this is funny?” Gabriel asked.

“Hilarious,” they said. “Those humans are practically children. They aren’t armed with Molotov cocktails of Hellfire.”

“I know that,” Gabriel retorted. And then, “Wait, was that an option?”

Beelzebub laughed at him again, and Gabriel decided that speaking to them was an exercise in futility, and (potentially) self-harm.

Michael rolled her eyes. “I’ll report in when I have something worth reporting. Have fun with...them.”

She gestured vaguely at the demon, who was smiling again.

There was really nothing left to say, so Michael left with a wave and a smile. Gabriel told her goodbye, but half of the word was cut off by the office door closing behind her.

Gabriel looked back at his charge, and noticed something...wrong with their eyes. With one of them. Too much black. The pupil was too big. Blown.

Concussion, Gabriel surmised. That must be fun without miracles to heal it up.

Okay, now what? Gabriel had never had a captive before.

He wasn’t stupid. If Gabriel was ever captured by the opposition, they would use however he treated Beelzebub as a template for his own treatment.

He used a miracle to create a cot beside his desk. Blankets, pillows. A thin silver chain.

With the restraining collar on, he wouldn’t need anything too thick.

He hoisted Beelzebub to their feet. They weighed next to nothing, and didn’t fight him. He used a miracle to untie them. They looked up at him, to the cot, and back.

“Thank you, Gabriel, for the courtesy.”

Their words held truth, like the gentle glow of receding lightning. (Ba’al Zebul was once worshiped as the god of summer storms.) Their voice was rich with a gratitude that Gabriel did not understand.

He guided them by the shoulder and they sat down on the edge of the cot. He attached the chain to their collar.

“You should be able to stand, but you won’t be going far.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

Another truth.

They unbuttoned their sleeves and then opened their shirt. They pulled it off, revealing bruises around their thin wrists, and big black ones on their bony shoulders. Were those...handprints?

They folded their shirt and laid it across the foot of the cot. Their trousers slipped off next. More bruises marred their paper-white skin. Lines across both thighs and both ankles. Larger bruises on the inner thighs. They seemed to have some shape, but Gabriel couldn’t make it out.

The sight of those marks made him queasy. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. He felt a chill on his neck, so suddenly that he looked around for Nuriel, angel of ice and hail.

No, it wasn’t Nuriel.

Bruises could be a message, right? A thing that could be read. What was the message here? What had Sandalphon pressed into their skin, and to what purpose?

Their trousers were smoothed and laid over the shirt. Down to their underwear, they crawled under the blankets and closed their eyes.

“Again, I thank you,” they said, not opening their eyes.

He’d had questions, hadn’t he?

“They aren’t going to find De Gaulle in Bordeaux, are they?” he asked.

“God willing, all things are possible, Archangel.”

Gabriel was taken aback. They weren’t lying. “You...still have faith in God?”

“Of course, I do. I have perfect and unwavering faith in Her.”

Sleep (or their head injury) hung heavy in their voice. It thickened their tongue, and softened their normally precise speech.

But they spoke the truth.

Their honesty was as heartbreaking in a human’s office as it had been on a scaffold in Eden.

Something had happened, tonight. Something _bad_ happened to them.

But, surely, if Sandalphon acted against God’s orders...the treaties would be void. The contracts...surely, he would have felt them break?

Sandalphon’s words returned to him. “ _Please remember that all demons are liars.”_

Maybe they’d lied to him, found some way around his God-given gift? Gabriel was unsure. He did not like being unsure. He wanted to know that he was in the right.

But the demon was asleep, and he decided to give them another ounce of courtesy.

He let them sleep.

~ * ~

The sun in the Garden was warm on their shoulders. They hummed in the back of their throat as they worked. The bees flitted to them, walked over their bare skin, and buzzed their song to them.

“Smile-flowers, face to the sun. We slept there in the wide fields. Yes, we slept a bit, and took the sweet-sweet back,” sang the bees.

The little Archangel sang back to them. They did not have words--they had not been given the gift of language. But their wordless hum could convey understanding and joy. They reached towards the honeycomb and used a miracle to pull liquid gold from it. The honey filled the empty amphorae.

“You go to the sunrise gate,” sang the bees. “To the sunrise gate next. You go. We shall fly before and sing this to our sisters.”

They hummed a song that told the bees to go, as they placed the filled amphorae on the low table. They did not know what happened to the clay jugs after they filled them. They simply filled them, set them on their low table, and moved to the next hive. There were always empty amphorae to be filled, and there were always bees to sing their days to them.

They were the gentle beekeeper of Eden.

They’d never seen another of their kind.

They danced, unseen, through the tall grass. Sometimes, they saw a bird, or some shaggy thing that loped from between the trees.

But these were trespassers into the wide fields that seemed to exist for themself alone. They watched the comings and goings of the beasts and the birds. But, mostly, it was themself and their bees in the fields of wildflowers and tall grasses.

When they grew tired, after the sun went to sleep beyond the sunset gate, they slept in the meadowgrass. The evening brought them their nighttime friends; the singing crickets and the fireflies.

The stars swirled like the bees, but slower, and the warm evening was fragrant with night flowers. They laid, sleepy and silent, in the grass staring up at the little night suns and the everchanging moon.

When they were hungry, they ate of the honey. There were cold, clear streams to drink from, and some berry patches that grew in the open fields.

They were a peaceful, industrious creature. Like their bees.

But the bees had friends, and they did not.

They longed for others of their own kind. The beekeeper knew that there were others like them. The bees saw the other angels and sang about them. The little Archangel longed for comfort and company. Especially in the evenings, as they bedded down in the sweet grass.

It would be lovely to drift off, as the bees did, in the company of their siblings.

On their last day in the meadows, they danced through the flowers, finding delight in the way the grass slipped around their limbs. The way that the breeze tugged at their robes. The sun on their hair and shoulders and wings.

The bees stopped them.

“Rocks! Rocks!” they sang. “The monster smashed our home. Many of our sisters are still and silent...we mourn, we mourn!”

They rushed to the eastern hive. It was crumbled. Golden honey ran over the roots of the tree that housed the hive. Bees crawled over the broken parts, stuffing themselves with honey to preserve as much as they could.

The beekeeper used a miracle to put the hive back together, and to extract the honey that they were supposed to harvest. They cleaned the honey and filled their empty amphorae. They placed them, full, on their low table.

They picked up the dead bees by the handful. They had been crushed. Yet, with a miracle, they began to move again, to buzz, to fly.

“A monster!” the bees sang. “A monster hurt us, hurt our sisters!”

“It threw rocks,” another group sang.

“Lo, one comes,” sang a lone bee, a scout.

“Monster?”

“No, one like our master!”

The beekeeper startled, staring at the treeline in the direction that the scout bee had flown from.

A form, shining white, emerged from the trees. Another of their own kind. Their heart pitched and tumbled with joy, and their body was moving towards the new angel before their mind could catch up. They ran to him, the very first of their own kind that they had ever seen. Finally, finally!

At last, God had sent them a companion! They would no longer be alone!

The angel opened his arms to them, and they ran to him, trembling with their delight. They sang their joy to him as they sang to the bees. A song of sunshine and clear waters. A song of golden honey and sweet grass. The flowers in the fields and the blue of cloudless skies.

He ran a gentle hand through their hair, down the side of their face, catching the tears that ran freely from their eyes.

“You’ve been bad, little one,” he said.

They understood his words, but they did not know what they’d done. They sang their confusion at him, and he backhanded them into the grass.

They cried out, mouth full of blood, and the bees attacked the stranger.

With a wave of one of his hands, the hive flared and burned.

Their bee friends screamed as the fire began to lick at them.

The beekeeper keened at their fleeing, burning friends. They tried to get up from the grass, to run away, but he was on them.

He forced them down again, yanked their left wing back, and jammed a metal ring through the flesh below their atulae.

They screamed as flaming bees fell out of the sky. The whole world stank of burnt honey, and of the stranger.

He smelled so strongly of the trees. Of their resins.

They barely felt the second ring. He flipped them over and settled his weight across their pelvis. They yelped and thrashed, but he had them. He grabbed their wrists and leaned down, leering at them.

“You’ve been bad, little one,” he repeated. “But, God is merciful. She’s going to allow you to atone for your sins. With your blood.”

He was large enough to grip both of their wrists in one of his hands. It hurt, as hard as he pressed them together.

They sobbed their helplessness at him. He wrapped a strip of creamy silk around their wrists.

It held them tight.

He stood up, and yanked them to their feet. “Come, it’s time,” he said.

His tone was light and breezy. They’d never heard words before, except for the brief instructions that they had received from God. Yet, from the bees, they understood tone. They could buzz with joy or exhaustion, with excitement or languid peace.

The stranger was not unhappy. He was pleased to be doing just what he was doing.

He shoved them ahead of him, and grabbed the rings that he’d driven through their wings. In this way, he guided them out of the meadows and through the trees. They stumbled, but did not fall. The stranger was too strong to allow them to fall.

They came to a clearing, where they saw as many of their own kind as they had seen bees in a hive. The beekeeper gasped. So many! So, so many!

But they were all grim-faced and tight lipped.

There were stairs. “Climb,” the stranger ordered.

They climbed, not fully understanding what they were doing. Stairs were not a thing that they’d ever encountered before. They climbed, with the stranger behind them. Up and up. When they looked down, they saw even more faces. Even more of their own kind.

They reached a platform, and were shoved down, on their knees. They stared up, whimpering, at the stranger who had brought them amongst their own kind.

Another angel, one with very red hair, attached strong chain to the rings in their wings. The chains pulled tight, and then they were lifted into the air, screaming from the pain. Their screams faded to whimpers as the stranger began to speak.

“Archangel Remiel, the Beekeeper,” he said. “You have been charged with knowingly forcing your bees to attack Adam. Adam, God’s chosen and favored, was stung several hundred times and nearly died. How do you plead?”

They cried out. They did not know what an “Adam” was, and had no words to defend themself. All they had were their songs. They sang their desperation and their confusion, not knowing if any of the assembled understood them.

“Guilty as charged,” the stranger intoned.

“Wait!” someone called out. His scarlet hair fell in curls down to the back of his knees. His golden eyes were concerned.

“Iblis?” the stranger asked.

“I’ve never met this one before,” he said.

“So?”

“There aren’t a lot of Archangels about. There’s, what, thirty of us, maybe?” he said, looking confused. “I didn’t see them when the Almighty made Adam.”

Another Archangel, a green-eyed blond standing beside Iblis, nodded his agreement. “Sandalphon, did you even consider that they might not have known Adam?”

“Impossible,” Sandalphon said.

“Uh...Lucifer has a point,” said another Archangel. This one had dark hair, waved away from his face, and stood taller than the others. “I delivered all twenty million invitations to Adam’s making. Well, I delivered nineteen million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight.”

“Two missing?” Sandalphon asked.

“No, one missing. I didn’t deliver an invitation to myself!” He frowned at Sandalphon. “I never delivered an invitation to this Archangel. I’ve never seen them before.”

“Uh...they would have stood out,” said Lucifer. “They’re nearly as small as Adam.”

“I would have known them! YOU would have known them! Sandalphon!”

The dark-haired one stepped out into the sun, and the light caught his eyes. They were the color of the irises that grew at the stream. The color of the sky at sunrise.

“Enough, Gabriel. God has ordered them beaten, and I’m going to beat them,” Sandalphon said. “If any of you have an issue with that, you need to take it up with God. She knows what they did.”

“This is not right,” said the one called Iblis. “Look, we can pretend all day that it’s not true, but frankly, Adam is a menace.”

Michael stepped forward. “He is God’s chosen.”

“He’s a wanker!” Iblis shouted.

There was an uneasy cheer amongst the angels assembled.

“Right after he was made, he took a stick and hit a monkey. Just whacked him, right across the head!”

“You will not speak--”

“I will so speak!” Iblis countered. “Raphael, you said he’d thrown rocks at the bees.”

A slender Archangel, with eyes like the twilight and a posture like a knife that was honed too sharp, looked over the proceedings with an air of boredom. “I did,” he replied to Iblis. “He threw rocks at the bees because they wouldn’t let him near their hive.”

“What’s next, then?” Iblis pleaded with Michael and Sandalphon. “If he stares at the sun and goes blind, are you going truss up Lucifer and beat him because he helped make the sun? He’s wiped his arse with poison ivy leaves, so are the angels who made the plants to be drug up there next?”

“God commanded punishment for this one,” Sandalphon said. “They acted deliberately. They intended to harm.”

“Bollocks!” Iblis said. “Adam grabbed up Gabriel and--”

“Do we have to talk about this?” Gabriel asked.

“Yes. He grabbed your wings and started saying, ‘Soft! Soft!”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“I don’t CARE! Anyways, Adam started RUBBING himself--that frontward tail--”

“Penis,” said the angel who would become Ligur.

“Thank you. He rubbed his PENIS on your wings--”

“Again, we don’t have to talk about this.”

“We DO have to talk about this. He finished--‘SOOOOOFT!’--and sprayed your feathers with his gunk. He wiped off on your primaries. Do you remember THAT?”

“OF COURSE, I DO!” Gabriel frowned. It was a deep frown, accompanied by a blush that ran to his ears. “I really DO NOT think this is necessary.”

“I DO think this is necessary,” Iblis retorted. “You slapped him with a wing, do you remember that?”

“Well, yeah,” Gabriel admitted. “But I didn’t really hurt him. I didn’t have a bunch of bugs sting a few hundred times and nearly kill him.”

“My point is,” said Iblis. “My point is...where does this end?”

“It ends with their feathers off and their skin hanging in ribbons,” Sandalphon said. “You can take that up with God.”

“AND WHO IS NEXT? WHO HANGS UP THERE AFTER THEM? Huh?”

There was unrest amongst the crowd. Angels began whispering to one another. A rock sailed through the air towards Sandalphon. The stone never hit its target, it just hovered in the air, a bare inch away from Sandalphon’s nose.

It took a moment for the beekeeper to realize it, but every one of the others NOT on the scaffold was now facing them. Their bodies were rigid and their eyes did not blink.

The other angels were in God’s hands. And God meant for them to watch.

“Michael, the whip?” Sandalphon asked, batting Lucifer’s stone from the sky.

The red-haired Archangel handed him a whip, gold as the rings through Remiel’s wings.

“You are to be beaten until you have no feathers left on your wings and the skin of your back hangs in strips. You have ALL been brought here to bear witness to God’s justice.”

The beekeeper breathed in fearful little pants. They keened at the crowd, at Sandalphon. At anybody who might give them help or shelter.

The whip slithered to the ground as he uncoiled it.

“This isn’t happening,” Iblis said, helplessly. He could barely move his mouth. “Sandalphon, you can’t...”

“I can,” Sandalphon said. “Prepare yourself, you foolish and disobedient sinner, to receive God’s mercy.”

There was a whizzing sound, but they woke up in a narrow cot before the strike could hit them.

There was a hand on their shoulder, and someone was calling their new name. The eyes that met theirs (after the dream began to fade, and they began to recognize their surroundings) were purple. Not deep brown pits seething with pain and madness.

“God punishes you with nightmares, you know?” Gabriel said, his voice strangely tender. Was he concerned for them? “You’re not supposed to sleep. Or eat. You know that, right?”

There was a pause. Not a gathering of thoughts, but a fight to make lips and teeth and tongue cooperate. They were shivering, though they were not cold. Their teeth were chattering. They forced their body to stop shaking and took a few deep breaths.

Finally, they spoke.

“I know that She punishes me, Archangel.” Their words were soft, all the edges polished off. Like seaglass, translucent and smooth. “Still, thank you for the bed.”

They fell back and back and back, to a dark place--a deepwater place where dreams could not reach them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is as historically accurate as I could make it.
> 
> If you weren't raised Christian, it is common in many Protestant denominations (including Anglicanism/Episcopalianism, arguably the religion of God in Good Omens) to believe that Jesus is the key to the kingdom. Meaning that all you have to do to get into Heaven is believe that Jesus Christ was born to a virgin, was the son of God, and died for your sins.
> 
> That's a lot less restrictive than, say, keeping kosher.
> 
> So, yeah. Under those conditions, almost everybody who died in the Holocaust is in Hell. Under those conditions, most of the world is in Hell.
> 
> Did I miss anything? Let me know.
> 
> If you like this at all, please comment. I am very nervous putting out something that is this whump-heavy.


	3. Le Miel Noir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel considers his past with Prince Beelzebub, his captive. The black honey of Eden. The first corrupter and his constant temptation. The helpful demon who saved him from Hell, and the clever demon who shaped Ekron and stole too many humans from the love and light of God. He has the distinct feeling that something bad happened to them, and that someone is trying to get one over on him. 
> 
> Worse, the wounded Prince seems inches away from discorporation, and Gabriel doesn't know how to fix that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: gore, bugs, pooping, digital rape
> 
> If I missed anything, let me know.

Everybody had aversions. That was normal. Correct, even, provided that aversion did not interfere with duty.

Gabriel had a deep aversion to being wrong. This aversion had a heap of smaller auxiliary aversions that hung around it. Assistants to the aversion that managed his existence. Associate assistant aversions.

An aversion to not knowing enough to make a good decision. An aversion to incompetent help. An aversion to broken promises. An aversion to lies.

He deeply suspected that the demon was going to discorporate.

They had not moved since he woke them from their nightmare, and that was a few hours ago. They’d fallen back into the cot that he’d made, one hand clutching their blanket, and the other falling carelessly over their head. They slept deeply, not stirring. Coma-deep, perhaps. He wondered if they would wake.

Yet, every time that he thought that they’d fled their corporation, they breathed. He began listening for the air moving in and out of them. It rushed like water kissing the shore.

The sound of it soothed him more than he would like.

If they slipped through his fingers, they’d be back in Hell, and then probably back on Earth--ruining his work.

“ _Please remember that all demons lie_.”

But did they? Had they ever lied to him?

He remembered the first time that he saw them after their Fall. He’d been sent with Michael to find their Fallen siblings, to give a message to them.

They’d found the hole in the ground that went deep down, where the sun did not shine and where God had placed Her broken children.

Michael took lead, until it got too dark to see. Then, Michael shied and Gabriel led.

The stench of burning sulfur was choking as they descended. The passage narrowed until he and Michael could not walk abreast. Worse, the ceiling kept dropping. It was brushing the top of Gabriel’s head as they reached the closed gate.

The gate was hideous, black, and locked. A few torches lit the gate, but the light they gave off was fitful. Somehow, it made the darkness beyond even more frightening.

Nobody guarded it, but he could not open it. Michael tried, as best as she could, around him.

He’d called for his Fallen siblings, but nobody had answered. At first.

Then a shimmer of something shiny slipped through the air. It formed into the smallest Archangel. They were still nude, as they had been on the scaffold. Well, except for a filmy, silvery cloak of some kind across their back. Their wings were gone, but he’d expected that. Their wings still dangled from their chains on the scaffold, after Lucifer’s rebellion.

They smiled when they saw them. And their wings flared.

Not feathery wings, but gossamer. Insect wings. They hadn’t been wearing a cloak, after all.

The torchlight through their wings cast dim rainbows across their fair skin. Across the black stone.

“You,” Michael had said, distastefully. “Get someone who can speak.”

They nodded, a quick curt motion, but other than that, they did not move.

“Can you open this?” Gabriel had asked, shaking the gate.

They grabbed the gate and pulled. It opened with a terrible groan.

The little demon smiled up at him.

Over the centuries in Hell, their teeth had decayed and they’d developed boils. Their clothing rotted off of them, and they were attended by a swarm of biting flies. But, in that moment, at the beginning of it all, they were still so young.

Just barely off of the scaffold, where they had hung for three days, keening wordlessly. Of course, Gabriel could understand them. They were crying for help.

Even in Hell, they could not speak yet.

Speech was something that they would have to learn. Gabriel thought that was why they were so precise about their words. It was a skill, carefully acquired and curated. Something to be used thoughtfully.

At the entrance to Hell, the ground began to shake under the heavy hooves of Lucifer as he trundled to the gate.

“Is that...?” Michael asked.

“I think so,” Gabriel said. “He’s...changed.”

“He is not deaf,” Lucifer said.

A few flies were leading him to the little Archangel. The flies buzzed at their master, alit on their skin, and melded with them.

Lucifer was bigger than seemed necessary or possible. His skin was the color of fire burning through rubies. His legs were covered in thick black fur, which looked freshly brushed. His hooves were chitinous and shiny. He’d earned a crown, it seemed. Black horns encircled his head. His face was unrecognizable, and he stank of musk and sulfur.

Iblis followed Lucifer, nude as Remiel. His beauty was undiminished by his Fall. If anything, he was more stunning for the feral wariness that rode in his golden eyes.

“Traitor,” he spat at Gabriel.

“That’s not a nice word,” Gabriel replied, primly.

“All the other words I have for you are worse,” Iblis continued. “You agreed with us! You coward!”

“No, I did not agree with you,” Gabriel protested. “God said Remiel was bad. They must have been bad. You can’t just DECIDE that you know better than the Almighty!”

“YES. Yes you can! You were never a human! You know right from wrong!” Iblis’ golden eyes looked so hard and cold. Gabriel had never seen him so enraged before. “What happened to Remiel was wrong--and any one of us could have had the same TORTURE inflicted on us.”

“Looks like they’re just fine to me,” Michael said.

The little demon crossed their arms and buzzed something at Michael. It wasn’t a word, but had it been, it would not have been a kind one.

“Sister, my twin...” Lucifer said. “You’ve grown so cold that I barely recognize you.”

“YOU barely recognize ME?” Michael said, and then broke out in peals of laughter that echoed across the black stones of Hell.

“Sweet Remiel, would you be so kind as to teach my arrogant sister a lesson?” Lucifer asked, a heavy finger touching the top of the little demon’s head.

They nodded, smiling up at Lucifer. They turned their intense blue eyes on Michael.

Gabriel did not like the look on their face. He thought then that those intense blue eyes might be the last thing that many angels would see. Maybe even himself.

In spite of the heat of Hell, he shivered.

Remiel burst into a cloud of insects. Michael drew her sword, and it began to flame.

The cloud descended on her, and she got out one choked shriek. Then, her flesh exploded and the demon who would be known as the Lord of the Flies stepped out of her corpse. Head held high, stepping delicately from the shreds of Michael’s skin and robes, they scraped Michael’s viscera and blood off of their bare feet and onto the stones before returning to Lucifer’s side.

At the time, Gabriel did not understand what happened to Michael. Later, he was told. Michael swallowed one of their flies, and they recorporated--inside her--from that one fly.

That was his first lesson in Hell. Big as Lucifer was, the smallest was the most dangerous. Beelzebub was devastatingly powerful. As long as one of their flies survived, they survived. Gabriel did not know if it was possible to destroy them, outside of dousing every one of their flies in Holy Water.

At the time, however, he was reeling from being sprayed with Michael’s blood and entrails.

“Nice sword. That’s ours now,” Lucifer said. “Collect that for me, would you, Iblis? Someone could use it.”

Iblis stepped forward to pick up the sword, but the bloodstained beekeeper stopped him. Stepped in front of him and laid a hand on his chest. They shook their head. No.

“Okay...so the tiny, mute, unkillable genius who just bested Michael while unarmed and naked says no.”

“What do you want to do with it?” Lucifer asked Remiel.

Remiel pointed at Gabriel.

“Give it back? No way!” Iblis said.

Remiel rolled their eyes and buzzed at him exasperatedly. Two flies alit from their head. One landed on the sword, flamed and died. The second perished similarly, just after. The little demon flinched with each death.

“We can’t touch that stuff, can we?”

They shook their head, pulled a large scrap of Michael’s bloody robes from her dead corporation, and carefully wrapped the blade in it. They did not touch the metal with their bare hands, clever little thing. Then, with other strips of spattered linen, they tied the pommel, the crosspiece, and the blade. They’d made a fabric-wrapped bundle of Michael’s sword.

They dissolved again, and Gabriel watched with a horrified fascination as the swarm that was THEM consumed Michael’s dead flesh. Every bit of blood and flesh--including the splatter on Gabriel’s skin and clothes. He watched them light on him, somehow trusting that they meant him no harm. They cleaned his skin, humming merrily as they did it.

After that, a buzzing frenzy stole away Michael’s strangely peaceful face, leaving only the boney mask of death behind.

It took them moments to clean Michael down to her bones, hair, and fingernails.

They recorporated, and began to gather Michael’s leavings. They were singing again, a beautiful song, haunting in the way that it echoed off of the stones.

Lucifer watched, looking more than a bit disgusted as they wove his sister’s bones into a neat, vaguely square mound on the largest surviving portion of her robes. They laid her pelvic saddle in the middle, and set her skull upon it, facing up. Then, they wrapped her in the linen. A tight little cube of death. They used their miracles to weave her red hair into a thick rope. They bound the bone parcel in red-hair rope, then they tied her sword across the top.

Remiel finished their song.

Iblis looked pale and vaguely sick. Lucifer looked concerned. But the littlest demon, no longer smeared in Michael’s blood, looked healthier than he’d seen them.

Nearly angelic. They looked very nearly angelic.

And that was the second thing that Gabriel learned in Hell. That Remiel could eat angel flesh, and it nourished them. Perhaps all demons could.

Gabriel felt ill. But it would be deadly to show it.

Remiel lifted the parcel and the blade to Gabriel, bowing their head.

“You do not bow to him,” Lucifer said.

They buzzed something, but did not move. Gabriel understood that they were apologizing for making a mess of Michael.

Gabriel took the parcel from their little hands, “I accept your apology.”

“They apologized?” Iblis asked, incredulously. “What for? And how can YOU tell?”

“For splattering Michael all over me,” Gabriel said. “And I can tell because I’m the Archangel of Communication.”

“That’s...communication?” Lucifer said.

“Yes. It is,” Gabriel said.

“Archangel of Communication? You WANKER! You knew that they weren’t lying!” Iblis shouted. “On the scaffold! YOU KNEW!”

“And I had the good sense to accept that God wanted that one punished!” Gabriel returned. “I’m not going to rebel against something that I knew I’d never be able to fight.”

“Is there an angel in your ranks as powerful as Remiel?” Lucifer asked. “One as powerful as Iblis?”

“Iblis?”

“I’m a void celestial,” Iblis said with a sniff. He kicked a rock and it skittered into the darkness beyond the torches of the gate. “I worked in deep space...can stop time and stuff.”

“There’s to be a great war, Gabriel,” Lucifer said. His voice was soft, coaxing. “You’d be wise to be on the right side of things.”

The little one stepped from foot to foot. In the fullness of age, they rarely moved. But they were young then. A few steps later, seemingly making the decision, they moved to Gabriel’s side.

They took his hand, the one not holding Michael’s remains. They sang to him, and there weren’t words, precisely. Just an idea.

 _Go home_ , they sang to him. _He lies to you. This is a place of punishment, pain, and loss. Your eyes are like the irises by the river, like the sunrise skies. You do not belong here--you are too beautiful. He lies to you. Go home. Please go home._

His third lesson in Hell--Remiel might lie to the others, but they’d never lie to him. In fact, they’d put themself in quite a bit of danger to keep him safe. A favor he certainly had not earned and did not deserve.

And never, ever repaid.

The other two watched and waited. Remiel’s tone belied their message. Iblis and Lucifer thought they were pleading with Gabriel to stay.

He shoved the little demon away from him. As he would flick a fly away from him.

“I have a message for you. From Our Father.”

He remembered delivering it. That they were unforgivable, wretched creatures doomed to Hell until the Final Battle. They were denied the light of God for all time.

Iblis shook with his rage.

Lucifer listened to the whole thing with imperious detachment.

Remiel wept into their hands.

He nodded to them, for he hadn’t been told to await a response, and then he took Michael’s remains and left.

That day, the demons left Hell, defying their Creator again.

And, even though they did nothing harmful at all--even though all they did was wander and collect food--God charged Gabriel and the others to force them back to Hell.

Seven days later, armored and carrying a spear, he was facing the demons in combat. He fought at Michael’s side.

A fly landed in his hair beside his ear and (again) buzzed at him to leave. Pleaded with him in its song.

_Please leave this place. Go home. Leave us. We harm none. Please, they’ll hurt you. The others will hurt you. Please do not give me your corpse to feed upon! Please turn back!_

He took the fly in his hand and stared at it. It stopped singing and turned its eyes upon him.

He remembered God’s admonitions about the demons. That they were rot and filth and temptation. Slowly, he closed his hand around the fly.

And crushed it.

Remiel squealed and fell out of a tree not far from him, and Michael was on them. She was keen for revenge. They were quick, but Michael was trained. Michael swung and advanced, and Remiel dodged and retreated. For some reason, they refused to use their miracles. Remiel found rocks and threw them with solid accuracy, but Michael swatted them out of the air with her sword.

It looked like Michael was going to win this fight.

Then, Remiel threw three stones up above them, knocking a hornets’ nest to the ground between Gabriel and Michael.

The insects exploded from their shattered home, and attacked the angels. Michael and Gabriel fled, and Remiel vanished in the confusion.

In the end, the demons were returned to Hell, most of them by way of discorporation. It seemed impossible at the beginning, but after Remiel fell from their perch in the tree, the tide turned. The angels fell upon the demons with renewed vigor, and forced them back. Killed many of them.

Why was his mind back there? Deep in his past?

Because Gabriel had an aversion to being wrong.

Something was wrong with the way that battle went. Something was wrong with what Sandalphon had done--on the scaffold, and...

He flicked his eyes over Beelzebub, whose breathing was steady but shallow. The bruises around their wrists, and the bruises on their thin shoulders...

The bruises on their shoulders came from hands.

Why hadn’t they turned into insects?

Why hadn’t they turned into insects in the first war?

Why?

Their breathing changed. He looked up again. Their eyes were open.

_Your eyes are like the irises by the river, like the sunrise skies._

“Are you going to discorporate?” he asked.

“I doubt it.”

They sat up and stretched. Blood had soaked into their shirt, at their nipple. Gabriel was certain that their shirt was clean when they’d laid down.

“You’re bleeding,” Gabriel said, pointing.

“Looks like it,” Beelzebub said. They touched their fingers to the circle of stain on their chest and grimaced. “Sorry if I made a mess.”

“Sorry, huh?” he asked. “You made a mess of my whole OPERATION, Remiel. We’re doing this for YOU, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“For me?”

“For Hell!”

“We never asked for this.”

“You need the souls.”

“We do not,” Beelzebub said, disdainfully. “We would have gotten them anyways! How many of them would have been alive in sixty years? We already have nine-tenths of the souls that ever lived on this rock. A few that you killed might’ve made amends, and lived their lives by God’s rules and gone to Heaven, but so what?”

Beelzebub looked down. “They should have lives,” they said, stubbornly.

When they hunched their shoulders, Gabriel could see another bloody ring on their shoulder. 

“I need to use your bathroom.”

“You’re staying right there.”

“If I stay here, I’m going to soil this bed, and I’d rather not do that.”

“I don’t believe you.”

They blinked. “You can TELL if I’m lying to you. Am I lying? I need a toilet.”

“Well, if you didn’t eat--”

“I did eat,” they said. “I cannot un-eat.”

“I’m not letting you go.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Beelzebub said. “Just unhook the chain. I have no miracles. I’m helpless.” They looked away from him. “Please?”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Fine, but I’m coming with you.”

“Not recommended, but if you insist.”

He reached behind their head and unhooked the silver chain. That close to them, he could smell tree resins rising from their skin. Frankincense and sandalwood. Sandalphon. They stank of Sandalphon.

Gabriel stepped back and Beelzebub stood up. In the white underclothes, it was easier to see them as the angel they once were. But that was an illusion. In the millennia since he’d known Remiel as a wordless child, they’d hardened into Beelzebub. Prince of Hell, Lord of the Flies.

Usually, they’d stalk past him, going precisely where they needed to go.

But now, perhaps due to Sandalphon’s enhanced interrogation techniques, they were...softer.

There was a guarded quality to their gaze that reminded him of the naked, tortured angel he’d seen on the scaffold and the infant demon whose cleverness had saved him from Lucifer and Iblis in the caverns of Hell.

“Which door?” Beelzebub asked.

Gabriel pointed.

“Thank you.”

They stepped around him, gently, delicately. The way that they used to move. Well, in the brief time that he’d known them.

The bloody circle on their back clawed at Gabriel. He had not felt this way since he saw their little wings nude and dangling from the chains on the scaffold, the only remnants of an angel who had Fallen.

It was the feeling of being wrong about this person. Of his own actions with regards to Beelzebub being wrong. Of God being wrong about them, too.

He felt certain that Sandalphon had done _something_ to the little Prince. Something dreadful. What pained him was that he didn’t know if Sandalphon had acted outside of God’s permission, or if God had commanded him to do...whatever he did.

They opened the door and flicked the light on.

Gabriel followed them in. The law offices had previously been a somewhat posh flat, so it was a full bath. Beelzebub’s eyes lingered on the claw-footed tub before stepping to the toilet, dropping their underpants to their knees and sitting down.

Gabriel was no stranger to war. He was an efficient and merciless killer. He knew what shit smelled like. Most people shit when they die. Battlefields reek of it.

So do the German’s death camps. And he’d toured those too. Made suggestions towards efficiency. He had his quotas.

The demon got on with it. They did not linger.

It was neither better nor worse than human leavings.

It is what they would smell like in the end, when he killed them.

As God willed it.

They flushed, then went to the bathtub. They never took their eyes off of him. “May I?”

“Sure,” he said. They were still bloody, and he didn’t need to waste a miracle on them if they were willing to use mundane means.

They closed their eyes and smiled. “Thank you.”

Beelzebub stepped inside, pulled the curtain, and tossed their underwear and undershirt out of the tub. Gabriel heard the water kick on.

They’d never been modest before. Too much time around humans. It changes you. Function follows form, and all.

Humans. Being human. Function. Form. Battlefields. Shit and blood and death.

There had been women there...

Like lightning, Gabriel knew what had happened. And, like lightning, that knowledge scorched and destroyed what it touched.

Gabriel yanked back the curtain, startling Beelzebub. They clenched their hands tighter around the cake of soap that they’d found in the shower, and turned their wide eyes on him.

They were covered in bruises. A bite mark, livid against their fair skin and ringed with underskin bleeding, marred their breast. Stripes of bruise ran around their wrists, their thighs, ankles, knees. Handprints darkened their shoulders. And now he could see that the bruises on the insides of their thighs were more handprints. He’d held them open. So that he could...

A horrible scripture had been pressed into their skin. These were witness marks. They told a story, one that Gabriel did not care to read, but the truth of which he had to know.

His hand shot out, wrapping around their collar and holding them still. The water was scalding, so he pulled them back, away from the showerhead.

They dropped the soap and wrapped their slick hands around his shower-wet sleeve.

“Spread your legs,” he ordered.

They did not move, just clung to his arm.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Not you, too,” they whimpered. “Please...not you...”

But they obeyed him.

Beelzebub watched him with grief in their eyes. Tears trickled down their cheeks. They sparkled like morning dew. Like quartz.

Gabriel scowled at their sadness, at their human propriety. He wasn’t hurting them. He was checking on the behavior of a colleague.

Their breath came in jagged pulls, but Gabriel ignored that. He reached his hand between their legs, brushed their cock aside and entered them.

Beelzebub made a horrible sound, like the sound of a mouse being trod on, as Gabriel slipped his fingers in them.

Okay, so he might be hurting them. Well, he didn’t have any gentler way to do this. Demonic existence was pain. They could bear it.

Right?

Gabriel, having never reached inside another human-shaped creature, did not know what he was feeling for. Not precisely. He thought that he would know when he found it.

He did.

Something that didn’t feel...correct. Something slicker than the rest. Something damaged and leaking. Like the flesh of a slit plum that rotted at the cut. He pulled his fingers out and examined them. Beelzebub’s blood smeared his skin. He rinsed his fingers in the falling water.

Beelzebub was torn inside.

“He _raped_ you?” Gabriel demanded. “Do NOT lie to me.”

They began to shake, in spite of their proximity to the scalding hot water. But they did not answer. They did not say anything.

“Answer me,” he growled.

They held him in that same placid gaze. Hands around his wrist. Finally, they shook their head--left then right then back to center.

“You swore an oath...” Gabriel realized.

They nodded. “Please, Archangel...”

He disentangled his hand from their collar and pulled the curtain shut.

Gabriel heard them sit down. Hard. That might have been a collapse. Definitely a collapse.

The sound that they made after collapsing in that shower was one that he had not heard in a very long time. Not since Sandalphon had dropped the bloody whip to the planks of the scaffold and stepped back to admire his handiwork.

Sandalphon had said, “You are to hang here, suspended between Heaven and Earth, until Our Father sees fit to release you, if ever. You are to be an example.”

Gabriel had not been able to move. He’d only been able to stare. Nobody had moved, just stared at the display on the scaffold.

One of their Remiel’s feathers, a downy covert, had stuck in Gabriel’s hair. He could see it out of the corner of his eye. If he looked down, he could see a bloody primary laying across Iblis’ bare feet.

Remiel had gone silent some time before, having screamed themself raw. But at the announcement of their final sentence, they let out a...sound...so long and sharp that it seemed to eat Gabriel’s ears.

That’s the sound that they made now, curled up in a bathtub. It ricocheted off the tile walls and floors, multiplying and repeating. In one shriek, they created a choir of pain.

It went on and on.

Gabriel felt certain that he could command them to stop and they would. And yet, he did not. He let them scream. It seemed the least dangerous option.

Sandalphon had raped them. He had sullied himself with a demon.

Sandalphon had raped them. Beelzebub was hurt.

Both of these things were true. Weren’t they? He’d known them both--the sadist with the whip and the sweet beekeeper. Who sullied whom?

This was dangerous thinking.

This had not happened under Gabriel’s orders. But...under God’s?

God had allowed this. Just as God had allowed the whip and the scaffold.

 _“You were never human,_ ” Iblis said, in his memory. “ _You know right from wrong_.”

Did he? Did he really?

God commanded, and he obeyed.

He did not question. He could not. Questioning led to Hell.

God allowed this. It must be good.

The little demon’s scream dwindled to sobs.

He could feel their pathos crashing over him. It was heavy enough to drown him. Black honey, something sweet that was corrupted. Thick enough to drown him.

Gabriel stood sentry over the bathtub as Beelzebub’s sobs faded to whimpers.

He knew right from wrong. He knew the good from evil. He knew God’s orders.

He also knew the difference between kindness and cruelty. The surprising thing, at least to Gabriel, is that what was right was not always good, and what was right and good was not always kind.

He remembered his one visit to Ekron. He had come to deliver a message to the one who had become, in spite of being wordless, Lucifer’s second-in-command. He had thought that title would go to Iblis, but he had neither seen nor heard of Iblis after his (thankfully singular) visit to Hell.

Remiel, on the other hand, he’d worked with them on various projects since then. They were efficient and brisk. Capable. They were certainly capable.

But, in spite of their polish and politesse, a deep and untouchable sadness never quite left the little Prince.

And, occasionally, he caught them smiling at him. A fondness that he had certainly never earned lingered between himself and the Lord of the Flies.

He liked that fondness more than he cared to admit. (How many people were genuinely fond of him?) Even if he could not find the reason for that fondness. Did he need one?

No, he did not.

Gabriel was supposed to deliver a message, and not a pleasant one. He was to meet with Remiel, now called a few variations on Ba’al Zebul, at the grand pavilion of one of the massive tiered temples that the humans had built for them.

He landed in a lightning strike at the top of the temple. It was dawn, and Ba’al waited for him. He remembered how resplendent they looked in silks of stormy blues and greys. They wore a crown of silver, and a necklace and bracelets of the same. When they walked, they should have jingled. But they did not. Their steps were the whispers of clouds.

“Was that...too much?” Gabriel asked, suddenly self-conscious. God preferred for the angels to walk among the humans unnoticed.

“No,” they’d told him. “They call me a god of rainstorms. They’ll blame me.” They stepped up to him, hands extended. A human gesture of welcome. They clasped his hands in theirs, beaming with joy. “Well met, brother. Come, see what the humans have built.”

Who amongst his fellows had ever greeted Gabriel with joy? “I was supposed to...just deliver a message and...go?”

“I am a demon, and I am allowed to make things difficult for you,” they said, and laughed. “Come, I insist. I know you see precious little of the world. See this corner, at least.”

They were laughing. He had never seen them joyful before. He found that their joy was as infectious as their treachery. And yet...

“That sounds like a temptation...”

“A small one.”

“Small ones lead to bigger ones.”

“True. Share a glass of wine with me, then?”

“I don’t eat, as you well remember.”

“I did not ask you to eat. I asked you to _drink_ ,” they said, and their eyes caught the dazzle of the light of dawn.

“I won’t take anything from the humans! And who knows what you might put in that wine.”

“It’s just wine,” Ba’al said with a shrug. “I made it myself. I used miracles, not grapes.”

They pressed a goblet in his hand, a lovely thing in silver, inlaid with gems the colors of violets, lavender, and periwinkle flowers. Their small hands encircled his around the stem of the goblet.

“If you drink it, you’d be depleting Hell’s stock of miracles.” They tipped his hands forward and took a swallow from the goblet. “There. It’s not poisoned.”

Their hands were still around his, and their smile twinkled in the blue of their eyes. He’d never seen them so peaceful and happy before, and never would again.

“Still seems like a temptation...” he’d said.

“Of course it is, Archangel,” they said, giving his hands a squeeze and then dropping their own away from him.

He missed the warmth of their flesh, and that startled him.

“You’ve got a difficult choice,” they said. “You’re supposed to thwart Hell in whatever way that you can--wasting our miracles, for example. Yet, you are not allowed to drink...”

The smirk on their face was a dangerous thing. Not because it hinted at violence. Because it was mischievous and...sweet? Because there WAS a temptation there.

Their interest in him was a powerful drug. Something stronger than wine and deeper than the ocean.

He turned over the goblet at spilled the wine. He smiled as he did it. They watched it fall from the silver of the cup, and splash the stone pavilion.

Their smirk changed, barely noticeable unless someone knew them well, which he did. They were pleased with him.

Their interest was black honey. Something sweet that had been corrupted.

Poison. They were poison. They poisoned the others. It was Lucifer’s rebellion, but who was he rebelling for, truly? Treachery as contagious as the pox.

He could smell the wine pooling at his feet, and he’d never smelled anything more delicious. He wanted it, and in denying himself, he knew that he pleased the Almighty.

That pleasure--the pleasure of serving God--faded to vapor beside the very palpable and very real sense that his cleverness had pleased the demon. That he had pleased the demon.

His stomach lurched as the last drop fell from the lip of the goblet into the spreading pool of wine. He wanted...he wanted. He’d never wanted anything.

And in wanting, he discovered that temptation was a thing much easier to resist when he wasn’t wanting.

“Miracle wasted,” he said, handing them back their goblet. “Shall I deliver the message now?”

They took their goblet back, and it filled, miraculously, with more wine. The pool around his feet disappeared.

“You are...so very single-minded,” they said, sipping at their wine. “And clever. So very, very clever.”

“Is this stuff why you’re in such a good mood?”

“Only a bit,” they laughed. “Do you remember--all those years ago--what I said about Hell, Archangel?”

_This is a place of punishment, pain, and loss. Your eyes are like the irises by the river, like the sunrise skies. You do not belong here--you are too beautiful._

“It’s a place of pain and punishment?”

“And loss. But I’m away from it now, so I’m capable of enjoying the beauty of this place. And enjoying your company as well. Let us discuss Ekron.”

A breeze from the ocean cooled his skin, and the chimes around the pavilion sang. Ba’al closed their eyes as the wind snatched their clothes and hair.

They were radiant...

They were poison...

They opened their eyes. “Come, sit with me.”

Gabriel sighed, but did as he was asked, sitting beside them on one of the pavilion benches. “I have--”

“A message, I know.” They set their goblet down behind them, facing Gabriel and taking one of his hands in theirs. “Look at this land, is it not beautiful?”

Gabriel had seen Ekron from the observation deck. It was lovely. A gold gilt city, resplendent with art and flowers. Ziggurats like this one dotted the city, each tier planted with flowers and shrubs. Tree-lined boulevards made for shady travel for the humans. Fountains splashed in the courtyards and huge, carved temples to Ba’al took in weary travelers and fed the poor. The people lived in houses made of stones and bricks and the marketplace was a fragrant tangle of tents, stalls, and brick-and-mortar shops.

The sounds of the morning reached him, even at this height. Dogs barking and carts rumbling. People calling to each other.

At this height, he could see the hovels on the edge of his vision. Those were not so pretty.

“That part could, uh, use some work?” he said, pointing.

“Hmm...”

Beelzebub stood up and laid their hands on his shoulders. They leaned over him to see where he was pointing. Their bare throat was so close to his face, and the scent of them settled around him. The wine did not smell half so good as they did. Green things. They smelled of the Garden and of honey. Gabriel’s mouth went dry.

Black honey. They were poison. He made up his mind to give them their message and leave.

They picked up the goblet and drank deeply as they sat back down beside him. “That’s Elohim’s camps. God keeps Her people impoverished and uneducated. They’re not my people.”

“What? Really?”

“Have you walked among the God’s people, Gabriel?” Ba’al asked.

“No. Not really. Just message delivery...”

“They are dreadful! A few extraordinarily wealthy individuals, and the rest struggle in filth and misery.” Another sip of wine. “The men of Ekron coax the women into the city, away from their vicious fathers and husbands. They take the children when they can--it’s a kindness. We are a peaceful people.”

“They don’t have the chance of entering the Kingdom of Heaven!”

“So?”

“You want them to suffer? Eternally, in fire and pain.”

“About that,” they said, setting their goblet down and taking Gabriel’s hands in theirs. “Oh! Your hands are cold. You know what would warm them?”

Gabriel did, and blushed. “No...” he lied, weakly.

“Wine would,” they said, and they laughed. “Don’t be cross with me. I’m just very proud of it. The wine, I mean. It’s very good.”

“It smelled...very good.”

“It tastes better. Maybe someday, She’ll allow you to partake. For now...about Hell.” They ran their thumbs over his knuckles as they spoke, and that touch felt far better than it should. “We pulled a few souls out of the flames. To see how they fared.” They paused. “Gabriel, their screams are for _our_ benefit. The souls themselves, they remember nothing. No matter how long they’ve been in the flames.” They sighed. “They always ask the same things. ‘Where am I?’ ‘Where is my family?’ They remember the pain, but it’s like a flash. Like your lightning. Gone in a blink.”

“So...they have no sense of time in the Lake of Fire?”

“So says Belphegor.”

“Which one is that one?”

“One of the void celestials. He’s a Prince, in charge of the study of space and time.”

“Iblis?”

“No, Iblis...Iblis ended up with another name. Belphegor was always Belphegor.”

“Do you ever see Iblis?” he asked.

“Sometimes. He visits when he can get away from his own projects...and he’s still cross with you, if you’re curious.”

“And you?” He asked it before he had the chance to stop himself. “Are you...cross with me?”

“Me?” they asked. “Oh, I was never cross with you. I wanted you away from Hell and all of our misery.” A shadow of their usual sadness passed over them. “If I could have saved them all, I would have. That’s my Hell...I watch the others suffer. That’s my pain and my punishment.”

“And your loss?”

“Loss?”

“You said it was a place of pain, punishment, and loss,” Gabriel said. “What did you lose?”

“That ought to be obvious,” they said. “I lose everything. Everything that makes me happy.” They paused, and he felt a drop of water splash his hand. He thought it was rain, but only briefly. “Ekron makes me happy, Archangel. I suppose you’re to tell me that it’s to be destroyed?”

“No, that’s not my message.”

“It’s worse, then, isn’t it?”

Gabriel reflected on the words that he had to say, and decided that it was. He looked down, and that was answer enough.

“Are you leaving...after it’s delivered?” they asked.

He’d nodded. “God is wroth with you, I think,” he said, very quietly. He wasn’t worried about God hearing--She knew everything. But angelic interlopers might prove disastrous. “All of these people, Ba’al. They’re choosing you over God.”

Ba’al shrugged. “Humans are simple creatures. I give them a safe city, full of beauty and art and music. Food is plentiful, and I heal them.” Their eyes met his, and he saw the mettle there. The raw stubborn pride. “I am _here_ , Gabriel! I am present. Moreover, I am kind. Whenever I can be, I am kind. Is it any wonder that they love me more than they love Her?”

It wasn’t. Not any wonder at all.

They were the black honey. Sweet poison.

They smelled like the earth and the Garden.

“Your message--”

“Just tell me,” they said. Requested. “Your glorious form is beautiful to behold, sweet brother, but I don’t want to frighten the humans. If it must be that way, let’s go inside. Please?”

“I can...just tell you.” He looked down. He felt his cheeks burning. They had that effect. Nobody else could make him feel bad about doing his duty. “Your message is...you’re building your own scaffold.” He paused. “That’s it.”

They released one of his hands, grabbed their goblet from the bench behind them, and drained it in one long draught. He watched their throat as they swallowed, as the wine marbled down their throat. As their hand tightened on his.

The goblet dissolved into a cloud of violet and blue butterflies that flew away, minus one that perched on the Prince’s silver crown. Its wings opened and closed, slowly. Their own wings had flared into the realm of mortal eyes, and his own.

They shattered the light and rainbows fluttered across the stones of their pavilion.

“I have to go,” he said.

“I know,” they said, standing up. They leaned over, and breathed the rest of it into his ear. “Tell them that I’m insufferable, and that I’m pathetic. Tell them that I tried to tempt you. Tell them that I am wanton and lecherous. That you are too pure for my silly games. Whatever you have to tell the ones watching us now...so that they will forgive your blushing, my sweet brother.”

They laid a kiss on his temple that he could still feel. Their soft lips warm against his skin, calling his blood up to his face faster than anything ever had before or since.

They’d stepped away from him then, taking their butterflies and their scent with them. He’d taken the lightning back to Heaven.

Beelzebub was right. He was being watched, and there were questions. He’d evaded them.

Later, alone, away from the light and noise of Heaven--Gabriel realized that the butterflies had been the color of their eyes. His and Beelzebub’s. Blue as the sky and the purple of the irises that grew by the river in Eden.

After that, he kept distance between himself and the little demon. His longings did not diminish. They were a constant temptation. His own weakness, his need, made him bitter and scornful to them.

When he heard that Sandalphon had wrapped up their operation in Ekron, kept them away long enough to cause the drought that roasted the land, Gabriel joined in the celebrations that accompanied Sandalphon’s success.

He raised a glass. He made a toast.

“ _Whatever you have to tell the ones watching us now...so that they will forgive your blushing, my sweet brother._ ”

The press of lips to his skin. Their scent, departing.

The next time that he saw them, after Ekron fell, he didn’t know what to expect.

Beelzebub looked whole, and greeted him with their usual, perfunctory courtesy. They were efficient and capable. This meeting and future meetings, though, were brisk. If they were meeting alone.

Maybe eventually, God would call upon him to destroy the little demon. But that day was not this. This day, they were a wounded creature, weaker than he’d ever known them, sobbing in a bathtub.

And his charge, besides.

He knew the kind thing to do. Maybe not the exact execution of it, but the basic steps, at least.

They had been kind to him once. They had told him truthfully of Lucifer’s deceit. Of the reality of Hell. At great personal risk.

Gabriel thought that he must owe them his kindness.

Slowly, he peeled back the shower curtain.

Beelzebub curled in on themself in the corner. The water was cold. The chill rendered them docile, weak. It occurred to Gabriel that they might’ve been trying to discorporate themself.

It didn’t work.

He picked up the cake of soap. It had slid next to the drain.

He miracled the water hot and the drain plugged, his jacket off, his shirt-sleeves up, and a sponge in his hand.

The water filled the tub, and he turned off the taps. He pulled the curtain away and back, and settled on his knees beside the tub.

He fished around in the water and drew out a foot. They did not fight him.

“I’m not...I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I don’t intend to, anyways.”

They didn’t reply. Their head was tipped forward, and he could see the collar shimmering under their chin.

Resignation. He’d been at war enough times to recognize it.

“As you will, Archangel,” they said.

“I’m not Sandalphon.”

“I know who you are.”

There might have been spite in those words, or venom of some kind, but there was not. Their voice broke apart like clouds in the mid-morning sun.

The little Prince was defeated. At his mercy. There was no fight left in them. 

He had chosen how he would treat them.

He’d chosen kindness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Iblis is Crowley. Remiel is Beelzebub.
> 
> The comfort is in the next chapter.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me. Let me know if I missed anything in my notes.
> 
> Comments and kudos are welcome. Concrit welcome.


	4. Dans les Mains de Dieu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beelzebub places themself in God's hands, which--this time, anyways--are Gabriel's hands. 
> 
> I put the comfort smut here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Smut, bugs, eating people (who are already dead and deserve it anyways)
> 
> Let me know if I missed anything.

_I leave it in God’s hands. I place myself in the hands of God. I offer up my suffering._

It was an old prayer. Made by many humans over the millennia.

It was also Beelzebub’s reality. So often, God’s hands were Sandalphon’s hands, or Lucifer’s.

They’d never been Gabriel’s.

If Gabriel chose to be kind, it would make the inevitable end of their relationship (in whichever way that it ended) more painful.

If Gabriel chose to be cruel, it would hurt worse than anything they’d already endured.

Beelzebub would take a beating from Sandalphon’s whip, all of Lucifer’s displeasure, anything Michael chose to do to them. They would take Raphael, and all of his malice. Anything that any of them could conceive, anything at all. They would take any hurt from the hands of their other siblings over the tiniest wound from Gabriel.

Beelzebub still wasn’t certain if Gabriel even understood what he’d done. If he could see that there was a difference between stuffing fingers in an open mouth (or, perhaps a better analogue, an open wound) and stuffing fingers in a vagina that was paper-dry, tender, and abused.

If he understood the violation that went with the pain.

His face had not softened when they yelped. They tried not to think about that.

Gabriel. He could be vile to the others--and often was--but they did not want his cruelty to fall on them. He could hurt Beelzebub. More than any of the others could.

Their fondness for him was intoxicating, loosening mind and heart enough for Gabriel to enter in ways that the others could not. It granted him the ability to rend them with a single touch.

They still hurt inside where he’d shoved his fingers. They hurt more grievously in their heart, shame-swelled and sick-feeling.

They hadn’t felt this bad when Sandalphon was finished with them. One touch, and Gabriel nearly destroyed them. What was left for him to do?

As God pleased, Beelzebub supposed.

The hot water took their weight as Gabriel turned the taps off, and Beelzebub began to relax. Whatever happened to them was an inevitability. They were collared and without their miracles. They were in God’s hands.

This was God’s show. Gabriel and Beelzebub, they were merely players.

They breathed evenly, slowly. The scent of lavender soap and the warm smell of the metal bathtub soothed them.

Gabriel dipped his hands in the water, and took one of their feet in his hands.

“I’m not...I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I don’t intend to, anyways.”

_I leave it in God’s hands. I place myself in the hands of God. I offer up my suffering._

“As you will, Archangel,” they said.

“I’m not Sandalphon.”

“I know who you are.”

And they did. Their brother who was kind to them. Their brother who lived in the light, and reminded them of their own goodness.

Their brother, who now, in an unused bathroom in a Parisian law office, was washing their feet.

Even Gabriel--rarely on Earth and always viewing human traditions with distinct distaste--even he understood the significance of foot-washing. This...this was an act of humility and service.

God help them, it felt good.

They were too hurt to stop the shuddering sobs that wracked their body. They were not too hurt to try and swallow each one down.

He didn’t shush them from the choked noises that they made, from their body’s little spasms. Instead, he began to hum.

It was an old hymn. Originally, it was written to honor Ba’al, but later scribes had changed the words to be a paean to Christ.

Still, the melody was soothing, and Beelzebub began to relax under his hands. They’d run out of any ability that they had to struggle. The hurt was too great and his touch was too gentle.

The tears still came, but their shoulders dropped from their ears and their tongue loosened from the roof of their mouth. The bathtub cradled them, and Gabriel’s fingers became more sure and certain as he worked.

He touched them with care and kindness. They brought their arms up to the rim of the tub, and watched him as he began to sponge Sandalphon’s stench from one of their legs.

It felt nice. So very nice. They really ought to stop him. They should...they should...

They did not. They let him clean their feet, ankles, legs and thighs. They let him remove Sandalphon from their skin, and replace it with something better. The soap smelled like lavender. The French were fond of it, and so was Gabriel. Beelzebub remembered that, and planted Ekron with lavender. Violets and irises, too. Everywhere they’d looked, they’d seen his eyes.

The eyes of the Archangel that they’d saved from the flames and the endless, numbing drone of Hell. The brother who would never fade. Not like the others.

They let him scrub between their toes and behind their knees. Beelzebub sighed for him as he did that last, the skin behind their knees being so sensitive and him handling them with such tenderness.

They ached for tenderness. For his tenderness. And as he kept touching them, Beelzebub felt their flesh begin to rise. They began to ache for _him_.

They really ought to stop him. They should...they should...

But now, he was at the head of the bathtub, just behind their head. He miracled a beautiful vessel, cut crystal, leaded and shimmering in the low light of the bathroom. Fancier than what he needed, but Gabriel had always had an appreciation for the finer things. Nice clothes, fancy office, a cut crystal jug to pour water over a demon.

Still humming (another hymn to Ba’al, this one uncorrupted, simply lost to time), Gabriel pushed them forward, and filled the jug. The water, when it cascaded over Beelzebub’s head, felt delicious. They tipped their face up to it, and when the last drops had fallen, they opened their eyes.

Gabriel was smiling down at them, and their mind tricked them into thinking, in this moment, that everything might work out. His smile had that effect.

This was not one of the empty, fake smiles that he usually wore. A genuine smile from him was the break of dawn after a night that ran overlong. It was the twinkling of stars after a storm broke apart and drifted away.

A genuine smile from Gabriel made them feel safe. They did not get a lot of safety in their existence.

He set down the very fine crystal jug, and soaped up his hands. He began to work the soap into their scalp, and they could not suppress the moan that started in the back of their throat. It felt so good. He felt so good.

Gabriel’s hands on them paused, but only for an instant. Then, they moved again. Scratching Beelzebub’s scalp and sending shivers through them.

He knew that they liked this. He could interpret their buzzing, so he could very likely interpret that moan. Hell, anybody could have. It wouldn’t take the Archangel of Communication.

His fingers on the back of their neck reduced them to panting.

And Gabriel? He’d moved on to another hymn. This one had started out as a song for Ba’al. Someone had rewritten the lyrics for Mary. Though Beelzebub strongly suspected that Gabriel was thinking of the original.

“ _Sweet Ba’al, lord of the high hall, god of summer storms, our gentle Father, our loving Mother, we honor your endless love, your kindness_...”

Beelzebub remembered the words. Penned by a fifteen-year-old girl who would eventually become the most favored of Ba’al’s priestesses. Whose great-grandson would stare at Ba’al with her eyes as he burned with the rest of the priests of the High Temple.

They did not want the horrid sights of the past here, only the gentle good of the present.

And Gabriel _was_ gentle, so very gentle at their hairline, near the bruise. He did not linger there, but he did run his fingertips over it. Checking the swelling, they thought. Not that he would know what to do for a cracked skull and a concussion.

Their breath still came in open-mouthed pants. His fingers worked behind their ears, and then their neck. He pushed, gently, down on their shoulders, and they slipped forward. Gabriel held their face above the water. With one hand, he supported their neck. With the other, he rinsed their hair.

The crystal jug refracted the light. Like their wings did. It sent weak rainbows over the tub and their skin.

Was that intentional? Like their trick with the butterflies in Ekron?

His hands on their head were magic. Those hands took away their ability to think. Gabriel was so gentle. So achingly gentle with them.

When the soap was out of their hair, he sat them up and leaned them forward.

The scratch of a soapy sponge across their shoulders and down their back was absolutely divine. As he worked, they began to hum. Not a tune, but a long whimpering sound. A whine through closed lips.

It was not a sound of pain, but he would not miss the shame in it. The grief. The naked need beneath it all, pulsating like a cancer that they did not have the strength to remove.

Gabriel stopped humming and set the sponge and soap on the ground beside him. He guided them back, letting their back press against the warm metal. He lowered his chin to the rim of the bathtub and kissed their shoulder.

“Alright?” he asked. His lips were right beside their ear, and his breath was warm.

“Yes,” they replied.

One syllable. Why was one syllable so difficult to make?

“More?”

“You can’t...Gabriel...please...”

They were too tired to resist. Besides that, they wanted this. They wanted his kindness. They wanted him to be doing just what he was doing. They wanted his hands on them. Their hand rose up to stroke his cheek, but he caught it and brought their knuckles to his lips.

“You’ll Fall,” they said.

Their resolve was so thin that it felt translucent. They certainly could not stop him physically. All they had were their pleas. Their sad attempts to keep their brother in the light. Safe and sound.

“I doubt it,” he said.

They turned their face to him, saw him peering at them. Too close.

“If I Fall, it’s God’s decision,” he said. His voice was bright as a distant star, one mere inches from supernova. “You...were innocent. In the Garden. I know you were.”

“I was not. I was prideful,” Beelzebub said, desperately. “God said that I was bad, and I should have accepted Her judgment and my punishment and been GRATEFUL. I was not. That’s why I Fell.”

“Bullshit,” he replied. “It’s a good story, though. Did you just come up with that?” He chuckled, and it was a dark sound. “Don’t start lying to me now, Sunshine.”

“Sunshine...” they murmured. “You...keep calling me that...”

“I do.”

“Please, don’t make me watch Hell consume you.” They paused. “I watched them all...fade. In pieces. Because they rebelled. For me.”

“I can’t stop God from hurting me. Fuck, sweetheart, I couldn’t stop Her from hurting _you_. Not in Eden, not in Ekron, not in Paris." He sighed. "She makes Her decisions independently of our actions. Beelzebub, we don’t live in a fair world.” He shrugged. “You made me realize it. That we’re all in God’s hands, and I’m not going to hurt you anymore. Not unless She makes me.”

Those words brought Beelzebub some comfort. He leaned them forward again, and lowered his lips to the place where Sandalphon had sunk his teeth in. Gentle press and withdraw.

“Do with me as you will, Archangel,” they said, drawing their knees up and hugging them tightly to themself. “But do not give me a choice in it. If you Fall for what you do, I don’t think I could bear having any responsibility in it.”

“I’m not going to Fall,” he repeated. “We’re even now. Ten million of us and ten million of you.”

“Yezz...”

“I can’t know God’s mind, I mean, nobody does, but...” he paused, plucking one of their wrists from around their knees and beginning to wash it. “I know She needs me where I am. Obviously, nobody’s irreplaceable, but I’m pretty close.”

“That’s pride.”

“And I’ve said worse. Still haven’t Fallen.”

He dropped their wrist and gathered up the other one.

“If I am to Fall, I’d rather it be for this. For choosing kindness.”

He kissed their hand, and then continued his work with sponge and soap.

“This isn’t kindness. It’s luzzt.”

“It isn’t lust,” he replied. “It’s contrition.”

“Contrition,” they repeated, softly.

Gabriel nodded at them. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have...hurt you. Shouldn’t have...I was checking on Sandalphon. You must know that.”

“I know,” they said.

“I couldn’t ask. You weren’t allowed to say.”

“I forgive you, Gabriel,” they said. “Whatever a demon’s forgiveness is worth...”

Gabriel chuckled. “The world, Beelzebub. It’s worth the world.”

Beelzebub sighed. This must be God’s will, letting Gabriel ease his conscience with an act of humility and service.

The sponge ran along their side, over their prominent ribs, and Beelzebub closed their eyes. They let him work. Hoped that his work would be the penance that he needed.

_I leave it in God’s hands. I place myself in the hands of God. I offer up my suffering. Let me be what he needs, right now. Let this be pure. Let him leave this bathroom as an Archangel and not a new-fledged demon for Lucifer to torment._

They had always surrendered themself to the hands of others when God wanted them to. God willed, and Beelzebub served. What else was there to do?

Beelzebub was neither stupid nor naïve, though Lucifer had leveled both insults against them fairly regularly. Their faith in God was not the pathetic grieving for their old life that Lucifer believed it was. Nor was it the constant apology that Sandalphon assumed it was.

It was a recognition. They knew that God would reliably be vile, and that they could not stand up to the Almighty. So, they submitted when it was demanded of them. Fighting back was engaging the enemy, and they had no need to engage an enemy that they could not defeat. They became a stone, the still and deep water.

God’s cruelty rolled over them, but in the end, they were still there. They continued. They went back to Hell, and let the great nothing--the low blue buzz of apathy--take their pain and leave them empty. In that way, they healed.

And, if God Herself did not stop them, they trusted that their course of action was correct. No matter how wild or desperate. They acted with the conviction of a zealot.

Because they knew that if God was displeased, She’d tell them. As She did in Eden. As She did in Ekron. As She did in a small garret room in Paris.

Perhaps, as She would here. Perhaps, She’d figured a new way to hurt them.

Gabriel guided them backwards, and his sponge crossed their belly. Beelzebub leaned back, and their head found his shoulder. They closed their eyes. His fingers, slick with soap, found their throat. He stroked them there, lightly, bringing the blood up to the surface of their skin.

They flushed. They could feel it in their face and across their chest. His sponge was dabbing, gently, at the wound on their breast.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked.

“Hard to anzzwer,” they buzzed. “Sometimes...pain feels good. These bodiezz are...wired funny.”

Gabriel set down the sponge and began to use his fingers instead. Beelzebub bit their bottom lip and whimpered, pressing hard into the back of the tub.

“This seems...nicer,” he said. “Nicer than the sponge.”

His soap-slick hands were better than the sponge, and their arms went up, around his neck. Clinging to him as he ran his fingers over their skin. Over the tender, abraded flesh, over the swelling nipple. Over their ribs, prominent from eons of denying themself.

Michael had been their last proper meal. They’d not partaken since.

Human food wasn’t as good. So they stayed thin. Painfully thin. Cold all the time.

They weren’t cold now. Their body was warm, flushed. From the water, yes.

But more from Gabriel.

Gabriel’s hands slipped over their shoulders, and into the water. Across their chest and down their belly. They grabbed for him, but he was faster. His hands closed around them, and their hands settled on his wrists.

“You’re...oh...,” he said. His lips dragged across the sensitive skin of their neck, and he kissed them where their jaw met their ear. “I know you want--”

“Shut up,” they said, and they moved.

Faster than they thought that they could. They wanted to shut him up, had to shut him up. They planted their feet and shoved back. They reached up, grabbing Gabriel as leverage and pulling themself up. Their lips found his before he could finish what he was saying.

A kiss, very likely his first. Definitely the first that Beelzebub had that they truly wanted.

He tasted like springtime. Like the sweet rains and the morning dew. Like the warming Earth.

He gasped against their mouth, but did not withdraw.

Beelzebub shed one tear, and then another. They felt dizzy as they slid away from him. The hot water caught them as they fell.

They couldn’t reasonably keep that up, not with a cracked skull. Stars danced in the corners of their vision. Blood pressure changes were bad for a wounded corporation.

“What...why?” Gabriel asked.

“Because God didn’t stop me,” they said. “Because I have wanted to. Haven’t you?”

“Yes,” he whispered. He lowered his head to their shoulder. “Yes, I have. And more.”

They keened as he began to explore them. As his fingers began to trace the big vein that ran along their cock. It was not a sound of pain. It was a plea. They wanted, oh desperately did they want him.

But they wanted him in Heaven more.

It was hard to remember that as his mouth fell on theirs again, as he forced them open and his tongue entered. They yielded, taking his tongue in as they would welcome his fingers, his cock, or anything else that he chose to give them.

Beelzebub was not stupid. Nor naïve. They knew how Gabriel felt about them. It was twisted, and it was stunted--but the affection was there. Twisted by God and stunted by the other angels, it still grew, somehow. A seed planted by a few moments of kindness and watered by a great deal of forced proximity.

Their own affection for him was born in unguarded times, precious and few over the centuries. When Gabriel forgot himself in the long meetings, when they found themselves working on the same project to push the Divine Plan forward. When they bickered about logistics and worked through obstacles--not as enemies, but as two individuals working towards a common goal.

After many hours of meetings, when the Princes and the Archangels had stopped speaking to each other, and it was just the two of them--working diligently as the others fumed or raged or screamed. Pressed together in the center of a seething ketch of demons and angels, whispering quietly to one another as they untangled the next step of the Plan.

In those times, when they had a quiet moment, Beelzebub wondered what it would have been like to have him with them in the fields. To fall asleep holding hands, as the bees did. To enjoy the closeness of another being.

Gabriel’s alarmingly skillful hands worked them in a bathtub, stroking their cock under no pretense of contrition nor cleanliness. He was doing this because he wanted to. They wanted...they wanted...

His other hand wandered up to their wounded breast, perhaps knowing by some Divine instinct, that the pain that he drew from it would push Beelzebub closer. He circled their areola, running gentle over the bite mark that Sandalphon had inflicted.

It felt glorious, and they moaned for him. A roadmap to follow. A star chart. Their hands clenched under the water as Gabriel began to follow the moans that they provided him. As his strokes became more certain, and his fingers found their nipple and began to tease it.

They closed their eyes. They were in God’s hands. Gabriel was in God’s hands.

They focused their attention on their body, on the feeling of Gabriel’s hands on their unguarded skin. His lips brushing theirs, pausing to feed on them as their bees had fed upon the flowers. His fingers on their blushing chest, swirling around one nipple or the other, pausing to play with the wounds left behind by their crueler brother.

Gabriel’s touch was magical. It called forth the pain of Sandalphon’s teeth, and changed it. Pain and pleasure made friends inside their body, and both pushed them to the star-spangled edge. He kissed them again, and they reached for him. Their arms found their places around his neck, and they clung tighter to him.

His hands on them were sunlight and joy. The world was going whiter with each stroke. Each breath drew them higher and higher.

It broke inside them, the pleasure and the pain. They were coming, crying out in Gabriel’s mouth as they peaked. As they spilled in the water.

They hung onto his neck, kissing his face and weeping. They were speaking to him, but as they had when they first met. In buzzes that were not words but conveyed ideas, nonetheless.

_I love you. I love you. Let us make the most of this time that we have. Please...be good enough to me that, at the end of times, I will remember this. As I perish in pain and blood, let this place be the last that I think of, and let me remember your kind eyes on mine and your gentle touch. Oh, how I love you..._

Gabriel pulled them from the bathtub, dripping, and laid them in his arms. The dawn crept into the pebbled glass window, silvery violet as rhymfrost.

“The dawn,” they whispered. “My angel of the dawn...”

And they felt him slip away from them. The whole world did.

Beelzebub felt their corporation falter. They were leaving it.

And that was okay.

They felt it was fine to leave their corporation behind. To slip away in Gabriel’s arms. No better place for them, really. Gabriel reminded them of their kindness through the centuries.

They were Remiel, the beekeeper, who never harmed a soul and who God punished to enrage the ones capable of being enraged by Her cruelty. To cow the weak, and secure Her own position against those who would resist.

They were the newly Fallen who saved their brother from the fires and the pain. From the aching loss of himself. From the low blue buzz of apathy.

They were Gentle Ba’al, tending to the humans of Ekron. Kindly god of summer storms, healing, and fertility.

They were _La Mouche_ , leader of a small part of the French Resistance. Teaching the children how to fight and how to run. Saving any that they could.

Their brothers slaked their rage on them. They were an amphora that would never fill, no matter how much pain they poured inside.

They could be this for him. A vase for Gabriel. Where he could pour his grief and his need. They’d keep it safe for him.

Yes, he could love them out of their body, and they’d be able to return to Hell. To the deep apathy. To heal their soul of what happened to them.

He made their tainted mouth holy. He made their abused flesh pure.

When their eyes opened again, they thought that they were underwater for some reason. The grey-blue light, and Gabriel’s face above them. His words garbled, but meaning still conveyed. He feared for them.

The pain in their head hammered as they reached for him.

“Gabriel,” they said, softly. “Sweet angel...”

“Oh, thank God. I thought I lost you...”

“She isn’t letting me go that easily...” They lifted themself up and laid a long, lingering kiss on his mouth.

The sound was nearly imperceptible. A soft click. And then, the collar around their neck slipped off. Gabriel picked it up from their lap. It glimmered in the early morning light.

“What?” he asked.

“Sandalphon...”

“Did he break his oath to you?”

“No, no...I think...Gabriel, I think he was discorporated," they said, fingering the metal as it hung from Gabriel's hand. "You can’t work miracles outside of your flesh...so...if he discorporated...the collar, it would release me.”

Beelzebub felt their miracles returning. Their body began to heal. Their skin and hair dried. They dried Gabriel, and the floor around them, for good measure.

They did not dry the hungry little mouth beneath their cock. They should...they should leave this place and return to Hell.

But they knew in the cockles of their heart that Gabriel was not done with them. And they wanted...

Regret and shame seeped into them.

Their hands fluttered to his face, to his hands. Touching every part of him, checking for corruption. “I don’t think you’re Falling...” Beelzebub said.

“You’re healed!” Gabriel said.

“Yes. I’m back in my right mind.” Their hands went to his face. “Gabriel, I would never...never...put you in that kind of danger.”

“I’d do it again.” He paused. “If I Fall, I’d be going with you.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make this my fault,” Beelzebub said. “Take what you want from me, Archangel. But don’t EVER make me choose.”

Gabriel paused for a moment, and Beelzebub shivered in his arms. Their head drooped against his chest and their hands clutched at his shirt. The tears came again, as the scent of him filled their nose. Clean linen and petrichlor, ozone from his lightning. The smell of approaching rain.

Gabriel reached down and plucked their hands from his shirt. He grabbed their waist and guided them, until Beelzebub was sitting on his lap, facing forward. From behind them, he drew the collar around their neck.

“Is this better?” His hands settled on their slim shoulders.

Their miracles faded. Beelzebub realized that they’d let go of their chance for escape. They HAD chosen.

They’d placed themself in Gabriel’s hands and God’s.

No, if they were going to be punished for this, they were going to earn it.

“Take it off,” they said.

He did so, and they felt their miracles returning.

They turned on his lap and faced him, straddling him. “God made us both, and knew all things that we would be from the moment that She breathed life into us."

"Yes..." he agreed.

They draped their arms on his shoulders, stroking his back and smiling at him as they continued. "She knew that we would come to this juncture, and what I would decide to do."

"And?"

"And She is not stopping me," Beelzebub said. "I may suffer for this. You may Fall, and I may lose you to Hell. But this may be the only time that She gives us. If you Fall...it’s by Her will.”

"It is."

They paused. They felt the blood creep up in their cheeks. Shame and desire. Two dogs fighting over the meat of their heart. “I want you. Desperately. For whatever time we have without the others.” They found his eyes, his gentle eyes. “Love me. Where the other angels...can’t see.”

His hands slipped around them, and they felt the heat of his mouth as he hesitated, just for a moment, before kissing them above the collarbone. Beelzebub’s blood wended southward as the angel continued, laying kisses on neck and shoulder. Their hands clenched around the back of his shirt and they keened.

This was not the same sound that they had made for Sandalphon. With Sandalphon, it had been a plea to stop. With Gabriel, it was the song of their need. Raw and bleeding, a wound that he could kiss until it healed.

They felt him smile against their skin. They felt his hand encircle their cock.

“Why this particular Effort?” he asked.

“What? You...you seem to like it...” they panted.

“I’d like anything you had,” he replied. “C’mon, why this one?”

Their head found its place on his shoulder. “You won’t like my answer.”

He started kissing their neck again, and Beelzebub moaned.

“I want to know.”

They sighed. “Fine. Pragmatism. That’s why.”

“Pragmatism?”

They rocked on him, on the hardness that waited for them. “If my brothers were sent to abuse me, it would be better--less damaging--if they used my vagina.”

“That’s awful,” he said. “Well, you warned me.”

“I did.”

“But why the cock?”

“Better for pissing outside.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

He laughed, and they loved him for it. Beelzebub knelt up on him and closed his mouth with theirs, kissing him deeply. Their hands found the front of his shirt, near the neck. A quick, hard tug opened the shirt and sent buttons skittering across the tile floor. He broke the kiss and stopped stroking their cock.

Beelzebub held his face in their hands. “What? Nobody monitors MY miracles, Archangel. I’ll fix it later. Promise.”

The deadbolts thunked into place. Warning wards rose up around them.

“I really don’t want Michael bursting in, nor Nuriel, nor anyone else.”

“They don’t...I mean...the humans aren’t reporting back until I have something for them, and Michael’s in Bordeaux with Sandalphon. Nuriel’s on a wild duck chase--”

“Wild goose chase.”

“Whatever. She’s gone.”

“Michael could be back anytime now, if Sandalphon’s been discorporated.”

“True,” he said, slipping a hand around the back of their neck. “Shouldn’t waste this.”

“Not one second,” they said, rocking on him.

Gabriel stroked their cock, and lowered his lips to their neck. They sighed, and that sigh was his name. Their hands went to his shoulders, pulling at the ripped shirt until he removed it, and tugged his undershirt up as well.

Beelzebub ran their hands down his chest, and undid the buckle of his belt, opened his trousers, and slipped their hand along his length.

“Trousers off. Everything off.”

Gabriel obeyed, and they watched as he pulled off his boots, then peeled off the trousers, and left them in a pile with the torn shirt and the undershirt. Underwear, sock garters and socks.

_Let me be a vessel for him. Let me hold his need, Mother. Let me be enough._

He came to them, shyly, and the tile beneath them began to change. Beelzebub’s miracles pulled grass up, between the tiles, and then over the ceramic. The air smelled of it, of the earth and green things growing. They opened their hands to him and fireflies flitted in the low light of early morning.

Gabriel dropped to his hands and knees, running his hands over the fine blades.

“I used to sleep in a place that had grass like this,” they said. “I was alone...completely. Before Sandalphon dragged me up on that scaffold. My bees, they slept in flowers hanging onto each other. I wanted...I wanted that. A companion.”

“Sandalphon said that you pretty much tackled him,” Gabriel replied.

“I didn’t know he ever spoke of it,” Beelzebub said, looking down.

“He was...very proud of himself.” Gabriel’s hand found theirs in the grass, and he laced their fingers together. “I’m sorry. I should have...done something. At the scaffold...”

“No, you needed to stay in Heaven.” Beelzebub reached for him, pulled his face to theirs. They kissed him as they laid back in the soft grass. As they drew him down over them. “If you must continue with the apologies, apologize with your hands.” They kissed his knuckles, his fingers still laced with theirs. “Your kind hands. While we can.”

He nodded as they released his hand. They opened for him, in the grass over the tile. A flower ripe with nectar.

The fireflies danced around them, and settled on the pedestal sink, on the toilet, on the windowsill of the small, pebbled glass window.

Gabriel lowered his lips to their face, and then their neck. He was working his way down, and they buzzed for him. A song to guide him, a melody of their need--and, as he followed the map that their song drew for him, of their joy.

He kissed the parts of them that Sandalphon had touched, and his kisses had the same effect that the bath had. His mouth was as cleansing as a summer shower. Those kisses removed the filth that Sandalphon had pressed into their soul. He touched them as he would something precious.

He lingered at their nipples, and the heat of his mouth sent tendrils of delight throughout their whole body. They reached for him, running their hands through his hair as he ran his tongue over and around them.

Gabriel’s touch was electric, maybe literally. Beelzebub wasn’t certain if he was using miracles or if it was just an inherent part of him. These bodies operated on electricity, and they felt sparks where he blessed them with lips and tongue.

Now, he was moving lower, tracing the dips between their ribs with his tongue. They cried out for him, grabbing fistfuls of sweet fieldgrass. The drag of his lips across their ribcage caused a shuddering pleasure that bloomed and faded and bloomed again.

Then he was at their belly, his hands finding their cock as his mouth worshipped around their navel. As he settled between Beelzebub’s knees.

He lifted his mouth from them.

“Are you...okay...down here?” he asked.

Beelzebub nodded. “I healed it.”

“May I, then?”

“Start with your fingers,” they replied. “You’re...very good with your hands.”

He smiled and blushed as he ran a finger around the wet, ready little mouth beneath their cock.

They cried out for him. _Oh, he IS good at this_.

He lowered his mouth over them, and they were ready for him. For the kisses that he peppered their cockhead with, for the way he dragged his tongue along their length.

Gabriel pressed his finger inside, cautious and exploratory. He was slow, so deliciously slow, filling them carefully. He wasn’t hunting for evidence of wrongdoing this time.

He was following a song.

His touch took the tension from them. He slid a second finger inside them, and they cried out.

Fingers deep inside them, Gabriel opened his mouth and took their cock into him. Beelzebub closed their eyes as he drew them in, as he sucked. The pull of his mouth was a gentle thing, urging them upward without any of the harshness that they’d known from Sandalphon. This was kindness. This was care.

This was finesse.

In the way that he moved his mouth and hands, in the gentleness that he handled them with. They gasped as he slipped another finger inside them. But it felt good. He felt so very good.

Warm. They felt so warm. From toes to fingertips, both buried in the grass that they’d grown. He made them warm, lit from inside. Like a firefly.

Beelzebub was close. They were floating, higher and higher, buoyed by his mouth on their cock, by the strokes of his kind fingers.

“I’m...I’m...” they sputtered. “Gabriel, I’m nearly...”

And then, they were. There. As close to Heaven as they’d ever been. Spilling into his mouth and gushing around his fingers.

“Slower, please...slower,” they said. “Yes, my love. Like that. Yes...”

He stroked them with his mouth until they were flaccid, and then peppered their skin with little kisses.

“Was...was that the first thing you ever ate?” they asked.

Gabriel blushed. “I suppose so...”

“And?”

He lifted his wet fingers to his mouth. Licked at them. “You’re delicious.”

They laughed, and it felt good to laugh. They sat up in the grass, and pulled him to them. Beelzebub kissed him, tasting their fluids on his tongue and lips. They pushed him back without breaking the kiss. Back into the grass that grew over the tiles. They straddled him as he fell. Gabriel’s hands went to their waist, supporting them as he rolled back, and they took their place over him.

Beelzebub reached for him.

“Why this particular Effort?” Beelzebub teased.

“You seem to like it,” Gabriel replied. His voice was tight.

Beelzebub ran their hands over him. “I’m sure that I will.”

“Remiel...” he sighed. “Oh, that...that’s good.”

They’d never cared for their old name, except as it fell from his lips. Sweeter for the desire that rose up with it.

They felt the tension flow out of his body, and it delighted Beelzebub to know that they had the ability to destroy him with a touch. Just as he could do to them.

Beelzebub’s fireflies faded with the dawn, changing as the day changed. The sun through the pebbled glass window of the bathroom had faded from rhymfrost through pink to the golden hue of eight in the morning. And the fireflies changed into butterflies, wings like stained glass in blue and violet. The blue of the open sky and the purple of the irises that grew by the cold waters of Eden.

Their stomach was still empty, and they felt it. Still, there were other appetites.

Their time drew short, and he was ready for them. Very ready. Beelzebub rose over him, teasing him with their lips.

His hands went to their waist, and he bore down on them with the gentlest possible weight. Gabriel wanted them, but he wouldn’t force them.

Beelzebub’s knees were in the grass, and the sun was warm on their face though the pebbled glass window. This is how they wanted him, in a place that was beautiful in its strangeness, that smelled of grass and lavender. They slipped down on him.

Gabriel was, truthfully, too big. Beelzebub could have changed him or them, but they liked the bone-tingling pain of it. Of being opened by him like that.

The pain would remain after Hell took the pleasure away. They wanted to remember him for as long as they could.

Their hands found his cheeks, stroked him there. “Breathe, Gabriel.”

He did.

“Tight fit,” he murmured.

“Too tight?”

“Not for me.”

“Good.”

They lifted themself up, and then let gravity take them back down. The pain and pleasure of it was sending blood into their cock, causing it to rise. They urged it on with a small infernal miracle.

They didn’t have to ask him. Gabriel’s hand encircled them as they rose up again, and crashed back into him.

The pain began to change inside them. It dulled to an ache that flared around their pleasure, lighting it up, fueling it.

They moved faster now, urged on by their need and by the low moans coming from Gabriel. He was sweating, and they could smell him now. Ozone and petrichlor. Rain coming or leaving, the smell of summer storms.

He smelled clean.

One hand on their cock, pumping. The other on their waist, not guiding them, but offering support as they needed it. They leaned forward, hands on his chest and eyes on his.

“Remiel...” he whimpered.

And it was a song.

A star map.

They followed it, bucking on him. Riding him with joy and abandon. The sound that came out of them was not one they’d even made before, a long thrumming drone. Nearly a snarl. It was the song of something dark and feral, nearly six millennia of need, now wide awake after lying dormant in them for their whole being.

Hunger. It was the sound of their hunger, finally fulfilled.

They came, and in their climax, they cried out for him. Called for him, and then fell into sobs and laughter. Mixed like sun and rain.

Their cock jetted across his belly.

Smiling, eyes closed and leaning back, they kept riding him. Their nerves were still tingling pleasantly, and they wanted to return the joy that he had given them. They moved slowly.

They opened their eyes and found his. They leaned down and kissed him deeply.

“Your turn,” they said, when they broke the kiss. Meaning his turn to climax.

“Alright,” he replied. Meaning something else entirely.

He was quick, turning them both so carefully that he was still firmly inside them and between their legs when they came to rest in the grass. His hands found theirs, and he laced their fingers together as he drove into them.

They cried out. He pressed deeper into them than before, all of his physical strength behind him as he thrust. Their knees drew up around his waist and they linked their ankles behind him. Pulling him into them. Urging him on.

It did not take long.

Gabriel fed from their mouth as he came, groaning into them as his strength left him. As his seed filled them.

He laid down over Beelzebub, his weight pressing them into their grass. A butterfly settled in his hair.

His arms wrapped around them and he buried his face in their neck. They let him rest.

The butterflies disappeared, one by one. The one in his hair went last.

“I love you,” he said. He seemed surprised by it. “God, how long have I loved you?”

“Since Ekron,” they replied. “Maybe longer. I’ve loved you as long.”

“Why?” he asked. “I was horrible to you.”

“No, you weren’t,” they replied. “In all of those meetings...you weren’t horrible. Most of the time, it was us against all the others.”

He chuckled. “You fell in love with me in meetings?”

“Oh, you were always special. You remind me of who I am.”

“Who you are?”

“You remind me that I’m kind.”

The grass beneath them began to fade. Soon, there was nothing but the white tile of the bathroom.

“You are,” he agreed.

He kissed their chest, their neck, and then their mouth. Their mouth, so deeply and so beautifully that tears spilled from Beelzebub’s eyes.

“I am...” they continued, as they broke the kiss. “Even when it hurts.”

Gabriel sensed that something was wrong and tensed in their arms just before Beelzebub’s miracles rendered him unconscious.

“Even when it hurts, my love,” they said, as they slipped out from beneath him.

~*~

It hadn’t taken Beelzebub long to clean the bathroom and their corporations. Gabriel was dressed and asleep at his desk, with no memory beyond returning to that desk after waking them from a nightmare.

Sandalphon’s crimes were erased from his memory. So was the shape and weight of Beelzebub’s body in his arms, and the light and joy that they had shared on a grassy bathroom floor.

They made the cot, sheets and blanket tight enough to bounce a coin on. They left Sandalphon’s silver collar curled up on the pillow like a centipede. One of the toxic, biting ones.

They were dressed in the same clothes that they had arrived in, with the addition of a pair of boots. It was time to leave. They lowered their lips to Gabriel’s temple.

And they felt a disturbance in their wards.

Slowly, they edged to the cot and sat down, cursing themselves for tarrying.

Michael knocked twice, as she had before. And, as before, she entered without waiting for Gabriel to answer.

Her skin was pale, her shoes were gone, and she was covered in blood. She half-carried and half-dragged Sandalphon’s discorporated body behind her.

When the door opened, she fell to her knees half in and half out of the office.

“ _Bonjour Michel, comment ça va?_ ” they asked.

“Fuck you,” Michael spat.

Michael was almost always prim and proper, but once things stopped going her way, her language dropped into the gutter.

“You must have found your missing supply train,” Beelzebub said, brightly. “I see my friends took very good care of Sandalphon. And you. Was that Anna? She’s quick with a shotgun.”

“Fuck you. Gabriel!” she called out. “Gabriel, help me!”

Beelzebub stood up and walked to Michael. She must have assumed they were restrained, judging from the look on her face. Beelzebub hefted Sandalphon off of her and laid him on M. Rosenberg’s fine carpet. They lifted Michael, who let out a choked cry from the pain, and set her in a chair across from Gabriel.

“What’s wrong with Gabriel?” Michael asked.

“Oh, I thought that he needed a nap. It’s been six thousand years,” Beelzebub said. “Sandalphon’s collar slipped off when he was discorporated.”

“You just...waited for us?” Michael asked.

Beelzebub smiled at her, but did not reply.

“You little shit,” she hissed, all of her decorum gone. “You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble if you just behave yourself and heal me.”

“You think I’ll save you? You must be desperate.” Beelzebub replied, spitting her own words back in her face. “This must hurt.”

They pointed at the gaping wound in Michael’s side.

“Yes, it fucking hurts,” Michael replied. “That little bitch that Nuriel grabbed. She shot me!”

“Language, Michael...You’ve been in the military for too long.” Beelzebub chuckled.

“Fuck you,” Michael spat. She was growing weaker, and Beelzebub could hear it in her voice.

“Her name is Anna, and she loves oranges."

"Who?"

"The one who shot you," Beelzebub explained. "Lucky for you, I’m not like you, Michael. I’m not completely heartless.”

They knelt in front of Michael and reached over, to the deep, black wound in Michael’s side.

“What did you do?”

“I took away the pain,” Beelzebub said. “You’ve only got a few more minutes. You’ve been discorporated before, you know you’d better get out of here quick when it happens. I might round your soul up, if you don’t. Bring you back to your brother. How does that sound?”

“Oh, fucking Hell!” Michael said. “Fuck you, you odious little shit.”

“Fine last words, truly.”

Beelzebub watched as the light died in her cold blue eyes.

Then, they got to work.

~*~

Replete, and satisfied as they had never been, Beelzebub walked in the sun. They had no destination in mind, just enjoying the late morning sun. The feeling of being freshly fed combined with the warmth of the sun, and the richer warmth of their memory of Gabriel’s unexpectedly skilled hands.

A street performer sang outside of a café as they passed. He was a young man with a beautiful voice, formerly an opera student. His father was a Jewish attorney named Rosenberg, but the boy looked French. He moved with the street people, and because of his talent and the fact that he spoke German fluently, the SS left him alone.

Beelzebub knew him in passing. His songs were messages.

The singer noticed the little Prince, and inclined his head, just slightly.

Beelzebub returned the gesture, and paused to listen.

“ _J'attendrai, le jour et la nuit. J'attendrai toujours. Ton retour, j'attendrai, j'attendrai. Car l'oiseau qui s'enfuit vient chercher l'oubli dans son nid..._ ”

 _J’attenderai_ meant that all was well. De Gaulle had landed, safely, in England. Someone must have radioed the Resistance, and the young singer was telling the world. What excellent news!

The song was a sad one, fidelity to a soldier likely already dead. The words sank into Beelzebub, a memento mori.

They could sense that their imps had returned to Hell, and so their manifesto would fall across Paris and the rest of continental Europe. Snowflakes in summer, released from Allied planes. Words that sharpened weapons, that urged on the fighters who dreamed of a place beyond bullets, fires, pain, and death.

Though it looked like the end of the world, this was merely the end of a war.

They wondered what Gabriel would think of the two tidy, squarish parcels of death, wrapped neatly in their Nazi uniforms, sitting in the two chairs across from his desk.

“ _Le temps passe et court, en battant tristement dans mon cœur si lourd et pourtant j'attendrai ton retour_.”

God had granted them a moment’s sweetness with their beautiful brother, surely for the purpose of sharpening the end--whatever that end might be. But, in this moment, in the midday sun of Paris, listening to a street performer who was also a resistance fighter sing the anthem of the French war effort--in this moment of brief fullness and briefer happiness...

“ _Le temps passe et court, en battant tristement dans mon cœur si lourd, et pourtant j'attendrai ton retour_.”

Remiel the innocent beekeeper of Eden, Ba’al the gentle God of Babylon, and Beelzebub the Lord of the Flies knew that they, too, waited. That they would wait, until the very literal end of time.

They waited for eyes the color of the sunrise, the color of the purple irises by the river, to fall on theirs again. They waited for any other moments of happiness that they might steal with him. And then steal from him, because it was too dangerous to let him remember.

_Let me be a vessel for him. Let me hold his need, Mother. Let me be enough._

They waited for an Archangel to remind them of what they truly were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a ride! Thanks for the love and support.
> 
> The title comes from a song. [J'attendrai lyrics](https://lyricstranslate.com/en/j039attendrai-i-will-wait.html) and [history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%27attendrai) and redone by a pile of artists. I'm a bit squishy for the song.
> 
> Just a minor headcanon thing, but I think that as the Archangel of Communication, Gabriel is a polyglot. I grew up in a region that still has a pile of people who are bilingual, so you hear a lot of, "Comment on dit...?" Or someone uses the wrong words, but they're close enough. So I think Gabriel forgets words (like "book") or gets close ("wild duck chase"), but he's still understood because he's the Archangel of Communication.
> 
> I read a post on Tumblr about the validity of fanfiction. It talked about putting thought into what you're writing about. Really, what's it about outside of the construct of the familiar characters, settings, and plot points?
> 
> This story is about helplessness, and finding agency in a helpless situation.
> 
> Even in the darkest times, the bleakest and most horrible, if you can find something that allows you to take the barest amount of control over your life, take it. Yes, taking control over your life is usually presented as an active thing, but passive resistance is valid.
> 
> If the best you could do was cooperate and survive, you are valid. You are strong.
> 
> I love you all.

**Author's Note:**

> For Irishamrock who liked this on Tumblr, which was enough to encourage me to write ~20k words of whump.
> 
> Well, this was hard to write. It got stuck in my head and played on loop until I wrote it.
> 
> (Working out my own issues by torturing Beelzebub, I guess.) 
> 
> Please tell me if you liked it. Or hated it.
> 
> Concrit welcome, especially on the FRENCH! It's not my first language, but having Sandalphon _tutoie_ Beelzebub was SO necessary.
> 
> (Using the informal "you"-- _tutoyer_ \--with someone that you're not close to, or in charge of, is a big no-no in French. Beelzebub, a bit priggish about language, would be *rightfully* offended.)
> 
> Should update weekly, unfortunately. I've written and edited parts 1-3 and I'm half through part 4, so there's that.


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